Hello, fellow wayfarers … Why a loss of gravity is imperiling both the American republic and the American church … What I think about the just-released Wendell Berry Port William novel … How you hope the church is different 20 years from now … Why living a just life is so difficult right now … A Rocky Mountain Desert Island Bookshelf … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.
The Loss of One Forgotten Virtue Could Destroy the Country—and Christians Are Partly to Blame
Last week, many people commented on a group of American generals and admirals for what they did not do. They were gathered at Quantico, Virgina, for live-televised speeches by the president and the secretary of defense. The military leaders did not cheer and shout as if at a political rally, nor did they boo and jeer. They stood and listened with discipline and dignity. Many people who watched this event, regardless of political viewpoint, were struck by this. And yet in no other generation would Americans consider this remarkable. The spirit of the age was highlighted here by the strangeness of the exception to it.
These generals and admirals included Republicans, Democrats, and independents. The striking thing about their demeanor is that their posture would have been exactly the same in every imaginable circumstance. If, in some alternate reality, a President Bernie Sanders had addressed them about how he would use the military to deal with the billionaires, they would have looked no different than they did that day.
What these military leaders demonstrated is a quality we all intuitively recognize but find hard to put into words. Indeed, this characteristic might be best described by what some older English versions of the Bible translated as grave. The reason we hardly ever use that word now is probably because it feels like it should mean “dour” or “harsh.” The word is closer, though, to what we mean when we say someone has gravity.
This characteristic is one that the apostle Paul commanded for church leaders—that they be “sober-minded” (1 Tim. 3:2, ESV throughout) and “dignified” (v. 8). The recognition of our need for this quality in leadership is not unique to Christianity. When someone thinks, for instance, of George Washington, this trait is one of the first that comes to mind. He was a serious man.
What does this gravity mean, and why do we need it?
One aspect of its meaning is clarity. To say a person is “sober-minded” conveys this. The mind is clear. To press the metaphor a little further, think of what comes to mind with the word drunk. Inhibitions are lowered. Judgment is skewed. If, while sitting on a plane to take off, you hear your pilot through the intercom with slurred voice, announcing, “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere!” you will likely react differently than you would if you overheard someone in the seat across the aisle saying the exact same thing in the exact same way. On a flight, you understand the stakes are high. You want someone whose judgment is unclouded.
The opposite of this kind of clarity is not ignorance, really, but silliness. In addition to telling Timothy to appoint only “sober-minded” leaders, Paul warned him to avoid those who were “desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions” (1:7), and he also cautioned Timothy to avoid “irreverent, silly myths” (4:7).
Gravity also means maturity. This trait is inseparable from clarity because both are related to wisdom. Sometimes new readers of the Bible are thrown by what they believe is a contradiction between the repeated commands to be childlike and commands to have maturity. But this is no contradiction at all. One assumes the other. Wisdom begins, the Scriptures say, with “the fear of the Lord” (Prov. 1:7)—that is, genuine wisdom starts with a sense of dependence, a recognition of what we do not know.
Solomon received wisdom because he first confessed, “I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in” (1 Kings 3:7). Wisdom includes, the Scriptures tell us, the discernment to know the difference between good and evil (Heb. 5:14). But when Adam and Eve attempted to grasp this knowledge on their own, apart from childlike dependence on their Father, the result was not wisdom but folly.
The New Testament pairs two statements about the young boy Jesus: He was with his parents and submissive to them (Luke 2:51), and he “increased in wisdom and in stature, in favor with God and man” (v. 52). He embraced both childlikeness and maturity. Indeed, the Bible says this process was essential to our salvation: In his human nature, Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8).
A final aspect of this gravity is something harder to convey. It’s what we might call a sense of responsibility. The person takes seriously what’s at stake. This facet is bound up with the other two. The “LOL nothing matters” mentality of trolling—on social media or in the pulpit or in public office—is about much more than the person who does such things. Immaturity is selfishness.
Solomon recognized the stakes and knew they were not about him. He was to lead other people, and part of what they needed was more than his years or experience could give him (1 Kings 3:8–9). The writer of Hebrews lambasted the immaturity of his readers, those who should have matured from “milk” to “meat,” because living off milk imperils their own integrity (Heb. 5:14) and also because “by this time you ought to be teachers” (v. 12).
Many times over the past several years, I have heard people—believers and unbelievers—wonder when “the grownups” are going to show up to save us. Sometimes the “us” they are talking about is the country; sometimes it’s the American church. The problem with this is similar to what the late Willie Morris, my fellow Mississippian, described as the rebuke he received from his supervisor at the University of Oxford while defending his thesis in history. “My next-to-last sentence said, ‘Just how close the people of England came to revolution in 1832 is a question that we shall leave with the historians,’” he wrote. “I read this to my tutor, and from his vantage point in an easy chair two feet north of the floor he interrupted: ‘But Morris, we are the historians.’”
No grownups are coming to save us. We are the grownups. When our leaders—in the church and out—are unserious people, people we don’t even expect to bear the weighty authority of trust, we are not playing a game. People are counting on us. Lots of them haven’t been born yet.
We’ve all become numb to this unserious, trivializing age. And many of us have fallen to entertaining ourselves with the clownishness of it all. But think about the people who shaped you, who most turned your life around when you needed it. Were they winking and nodding their way through lies or bluster? Were they gullibly falling for untruths? I imagine they had a clarity, a maturity, a responsibility that gave them weightiness. They were serious people. They were sober-minded. They were grave.
We are defying gravity. But sometimes what feels like flying is just falling, except for that sudden stop at the end.
Good Night, Port William
Wendell Berry has been one of the most important shapers of my imagination since I was a teenager. His stories of Port William have shaped how I think about place, belonging, community, integrity, and in some ways even heaven. His latest novel, Marce Catlett, releases this week. I wrote a review of it for the most recent issue of Christianity Today.
Here’s an excerpt of my essay:
I felt something of that ache when I realized I might well be visiting for the last time a beloved, familiar community that I’ve traveled to over and over again since adolescence. The difference is that this community does not exist. Or rather, this place, Port William, exists in the imagination of Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry.
Those of us who have savored his novels and short stories—with the familiar generations of Catletts and Coulters—can see that when Berry is gone, Port William will be gone too. No one else can or should write it. …
Without articulating it this way, Andy seems to experience the epiphany that T. S. Eliot conveyed from the rose garden at Burnt Norton: “Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, / And time future contained in time past.” Andy comes to see that, in this opening between time and eternity, he, his father, and his grandfather are contemporaries possessed of a common vision; they are in fact brothers.
It is not just that the story continues from one generation to the next—although that’s certainly part of it. Rather, the story is held together, somehow, in eternity itself.
You can read the whole thing here.
What Do You Hope the Church Will Look Like in 20 Years?
In two decades, the world will have changed dramatically. If you could peer into the future, what would you want the church to be like? As you know, that depends utterly on the providence of God. But God’s providence works through small human decisions rippling outward through time.
Because we care about that future, Christianity Today launched the Next Gen Initiative to equip tomorrow’s preachers, writers, artists, and storytellers with the wisdom, creativity, and vision they need.
One of the reasons we decided to do that is because 40 percent of our audience is under 35, and we’re amazed by what we’re seeing—lives transformed and callings coming into focus. One young leader said, “CT’s Young Storytellers Fellowship allowed me to go deeper into what I think God has called me to do.”
This week, during CT’s Week of Giving, you can help raise up the next generation of leaders, and your gift will be matched dollar for dollar. Jesus promised “upon this rock” he would build his church. Because of that certainty, we feel called to throw some pebbles out there into the future.
You can help us by giving here.
Benjamin Watson on the Just Life
I’ve been busy recording a lot of conversations for The Russell Moore Show that I’m really excited about. As I mentioned before, we took a few weeks’ pause for me to get caught up, because the travel schedule has been brutal. So stay tuned for next week.
In the meantime, I wanted you to hear a conversation I had with my friend Benjamin Watson, a former NFL player and a committed Christian, on his new podcast, The Just Life.
The beginning of the conversation covers a lot of my backstory, but then we talk about what justice looks like as a way of life—in matters such as resisting tribalism, choosing how to steward influence, and faithfully taking small actions, which are often much more important than big, noticeable ones.
A Call for Your Desert Island Bookshelves and Playlists
For those of you who haven’t submitted your Desert Island Bookshelf or Playlist to me, please do. I have many of them, but lots don’t have any notation as to why you like the books on the shelf or the songs on the list or are missing a town/city or (in the case of books) a photo. Please send yours to me.
Desert island Bookshelf
Every other week, I share a list of books that one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a deserted island. This week’s submission comes from reader Al Janssen from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Here’s his list with his notes:
- My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok: For me as a Christian writer, best examination of the tension between art and faith, albeit from an Orthodox Jewish artist.
- Father Elijah: An Apocalypse by Michael D. O’Brien: Much deeper than more popular end times novels.
- The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame: This one is just a ton of fun!
- Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie: Short stories by the master of detective fiction.
- The Prophets by Abraham J. Heschel: A Jewish scholar guides me through my study of Old Testament prophets.
- Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels by Kenneth E. Bailey: To help me dive deeper into the life and teachings of Jesus.
- The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God by Dallas Willard: I love all of Willard’s books, but this one is his profound examination of the meaning of true discipleship.
- The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro: I haven’t had time to read all of this very long biography. But it’s a masterpiece, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, about Robert Moses that examines how one man, though never elected, achieved and held power for decades and shaped New York City.
- Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties by Paul Johnson: I will want to reflect on our modern history, and Johnson will be my guide.
- The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, David Halberstam, editor: I will miss sports, but this collection allows me to remember some of the greatest athletes and contests of the 20th century.
- Every Moment Holy, Volume III: A collection of prayers for all occasions by many authors—will help me stay connected to the worldwide body of Christ.
Al also writes, “Finally, I need to have at least one book by my favorite Christian author, Philip Yancey. Well, the choice seems obvious: Disappointment with God. After all, I’m stranded on a desert island!”
Thank you, Al!
Readers, what do y’all think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?
- For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list between 5 and 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (We’ll cover those later.)
- For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books, along with a photo of all the books together.
Send your list (or both lists) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which you’re writing.
Quote of the Moment
“Because of the story, there were some kinds of a man that Wheeler could not be, a certain kind that he had to become, and certain things that he had to do. Andy and his children have been similarly limited and prompted by this story. Because they have lived within its terrestrial bounds and reach, they have borne it demandingly in mind. It is still a passage through the dark, revealed to its followers only by love for those they follow, for one another, and by the daylight as it comes.”
—Wendell Berry, Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story
Currently Reading (or Re-Reading)
- Thomas Merton, The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Werner Herzog, The Future of Truth, trans. Michael Hofmann (Penguin)
- Irving Finkel, The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies (Hodder)
- Cass Sunstein, On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom (MIT Press)
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And, of course, I would love to hear from you about anything. Send me an email at questions@russellmoore.com if you have any questions or comments about this newsletter, if there are other things you would like to see discussed here, or if you would just like to say hello.
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Russell Moore
Editor in Chief, Christianity Today
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