How are you preparing for your own death?

As soon as i spotted the police cars in our driveway I knew that my father had died. Although he was recovering rapidly from the heart attack he had suffered less than a month before, it took me only a moment to deduce that his weakened heart had been victimized by a second attack.

When I went into the house my mother, always the strong one in our family, acknowledged what I had already surmised. After we consoled each other, my mother returned to the unpleasant chore of telephoning the rest of our family to give them the unexpected news, while I timidly and curiously made my way downstairs to view my father’s body.

I had never seen a dead person before. I was 20 years old and well aware that people died, yet I had never come close to touching a dead body. I wasn’t sure what to think as I sat there on the floor looking at the body of the man who had been my father. I didn’t know whether to cry or to be angry, whether to hold his hand or just look, whether to say something or sit in silence.

Then, what I didn’t want to think about forced its way into my consciousness: “Someday, I’m going to die, too. Someday that will be me.”

Since then, I’ve discovered from talking with others who have lost a parent that it is very common to have such thoughts. When a grandparent dies, we unconsciously sense that our parents serve as a buffer between ourselves and death. But when a parent dies, there is no escaping the reality that our generation is next in line.

I have thought about death often since that time, but never considered it as seriously as I did last year when I enrolled in a graduate program in counseling to improve my skills as a pastor and counselor. I was immediately asked to fill out a 20-page form entitled “Personal Death Awareness” (PDA) Its purpose is to force one to come to grips with his or her feelings and fears about death. The rationale for this is that it is presumptuous for counselors who have never done anything to prepare for their own deaths to counsel people who are facing death. Though I vigorously resisted doing the PDA, it proved to be helpful, for it motivated me to rethink my theology of death. Here are some of the questions the PDA asked:

• How old do you think you will be when you die?

• What do you expect to die from?

• If you had your choice, how would you want to die?

• Which, if either, frightens you more: death, or dying?

• What about dying do you fear: (1) Pain? (2) Progressive deterioration and disability? (3) Being left alone? (4) Receiving inadequate medical care?

• Have you ever thought about committing suicide?

• Who would you like to have involved in your funeral? What do you want to have happen at your funeral? What message would you want people attending your funeral to hear?

• What do you most want to accomplish before you die?

Answering these and other questions, then discussing them with my classmates, was an uncomfortable experience. As strong as I think my faith in God is, thinking about my own death was—and is—a bit unsettling. It is unsettling because death seems so final; it is unsettling because I value having control over the circumstances of my life, and death is something very much out of my control; it is unsettling because though I’ve known many people who have died and have studied the dynamics of death and dying, the actual experience of dying is, quite obviously, one I’ve never had. It is an unknown, and the unknown unsettles me.

How is a Christian supposed to think about death? Is it wrong to be afraid of dying? Since we Christians believe in resurrection and eternal life, is it hypocritical to grieve when a loved one dies? To be angry when test results reveal that I have an inoperable tumor? What is the appropriate perspective for a Christian to have about death?

Common Attitudes Toward Death

It is instructive to consider some of the more common ways people think about death. One prevalent attitude toward death is denial. Rather than admit that death is inevitable, some people deny that it will ever happen to them.

Last year I often visited a 75-year-old man who had been informed that he had terminal cancer. Despite gentle efforts that would have permitted him to talk openly about that fact and his feelings about it, not once did he ever verbally admit that he was going to die. He said nothing about it to his wife and children, and refused to discuss it with his doctors. As far as I could observe, he had done his best to banish the thought of death completely from his awareness.

We all know intellectually that someday we too will die, but one’s own death can be a very frightening thing to contemplate. We tend to think of death as some nebulous creature that we won’t encounter for so long that there is no real reason to bother thinking about it. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Denial of Death (Free Press, 1973), Ernest Becker suggested that the primary concern of every living person is death, and that most people deal with that concern by denying that it will ever happen to them.

We find a second common attitude toward death in Hebrews 2:14–15: “Since the children, as he calls them, are people of flesh and blood, Jesus himself became like them and shared their human nature. He did this so that through his death he might destroy the Devil, who has the power over death, and so set free those who were slaves all their lives because of their fear of death” (GNB)

Of all the fears and anxieties we sustain in human life, the fear of death is likely the most universal, and it can be an especially paralyzing fear. Some, as the author of Hebrews says, have been enslaved by that fear all their lives. The perspective of the person afraid of death—which, I suspect, includes each of us at some time or other—is that death means pain, loneliness, and even terror.

A third common attitude toward death is one I have found to be particularly prevalent among my non-Christian friends. It might be called the “bridge” attitude, and it says, “Death is a bridge that I’ll cross when I reach it. There’s nothing I can do about it now, and what I think about it won’t change what will happen anyway. So why worry?” People with this perspective don’t seem to fear death, nor do they deny that they, too, will someday die. They simply see no alternative to waiting until it happens and taking it as it comes.

The Biblical Perspective

What does the Bible teach about death? And how should Christians think about death?

The Bible repeatedly emphasizes two central truths about death. The first is that death is an enemy. It is not a “natural” part of human existence, not something to be accepted casually and nonchalantly.

Shortly after my father died I attended a seminar where I heard a seminary professor talk about coping with crisis. He related his own experience with the death of his mother-in-law a few weeks previously. This dynamic and greatly loved woman had died from cancer. Following the funeral service, a number of sincere, well-meaning Christian friends said to this professor, who was obviously shaken by the loss of a woman he cared for deeply: “Don’t feel bad. Don’t cry. Isn’t it wonderful that she’s gone to be with the Lord?”

He had smiled weakly, he said, and given a token nod of assent to his friends’ comments. Inside, however, he felt ready to explode with anger and grief and frustration. He wanted to shout at the top of his lungs, “No, it’s not wonderful that she’s gone! I miss her and I hurt and I’m going to cry as much as I want!”

He then explained a biblical perspective of death that was new to me, and one that was very effective in helping me to make sense out of my feelings about my father’s death. Death, he said, is never a good thing. Death is an evil. When God created the world, everything that he created was good. Death was not a part of God’s original creation. It only became “natural”—in the sense that all living things die—after mankind’s sin (Gen. 3:19). Death, according to the Bible, is a consequence of evil and a punishment for evil.

Futhermore, death is under the authority of the Evil One himself, Satan. Says the author of Hebrews: Jesus came to … destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14, NIV). Death, then, is one of the weapons in Satan’s arsenal that he uses to wage war on God and on humanity. More than once the Book of Revelation reveals the fact that one of Satan’s chief methods of waging war on the saints is to put the saints to death (Rev. 11:7; 12:17; 13:7; 17:6; 18:24). In 1 Corinthians 15:26 the apostle Paul says of death, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

Because death is evil, it is entirely appropriate to hate death, to grieve over death, to be apprehensive about death, and to be angry at death. Even though we believe in resurrection and eternal life, it is not evidence of a lack of faith to grieve over death. Rather, to resist and loathe death is a proper response.

Remember how Jesus responded to the death of his close friend Lazarus? “When Jesus saw her [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; and he said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus wept” (John 11:33–35).

Greek scholars tell us that the Greek words translated “deeply moved” and “troubled” can just as well be translated: “indignant,” “outraged,” “agitated,” and “angry.” But why was Jesus outraged? After all, wasn’t Lazarus better off? Wasn’t Jesus about to resurrect him anyway? Don’t be upset, Jesus; don’t cry.

We must realize that Jesus was outraged because the Enemy had just won another battle. Death had claimed another victim. But Jesus was not only angry, he was grieved, and the tears poured down his face. He was overwhelmed by the loss and the pain and the anguish of knowing that a person he dearly loved had died.

Learning that it was acceptable for me as a Christian to ache inside because my father had died and to be apprehensive about the thought that I would someday die was a tremendously liberating insight. That discovery has allowed me to grieve over death without guilt. It has removed the burden of trying to pretend that I don’t have any fears or anxieties whatsoever about death since I am a Christian. I take great comfort in the knowledge that Jesus himself not only wept when Lazarus died, but that he also wept when contemplating his own death (cf. Matt. 26:36–39 with Heb. 5:7).

I also take great comfort in the knowledge that Jesus is able to empathize with my concerns over death. When I grieve, Jesus grieves both for me and with me. He has not left me to endure the pain of death alone. He shares that pain with me. In describing Jesus as our High Priest, Hebrews 4:15 states, “Our High Priest is not one who cannot feel sympathy for our weaknesses. On the contrary, we have a High Priest who was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin” (GNB) When the time comes for each of us to face death, we will not face it alone. We will face it with Jesus at our side, the one who understands our dread and our insecurity completely because he has faced death himself.

Death As A Beginning

There is a second truth that Scripture emphasizes about death: the truth that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ death has been transformed from an ending into a beginning. Through the resurrection death has been changed from a period into a comma, from a conclusion into an introduction, from a final destination into a rest stop.

That is not to intimate, however, that transitions are painless. Moving away from Minnesota, where I had spent the first 23 years of my life, was a very traumatic experience for me. Leaving Minnesota meant leaving my family, leaving friends, leaving the church where I was baptized, and leaving years of fond memories. It was a bit frightening to pack all my earthly goods into my car, wave goodbye to my family, and head for a strange place called California where I had yet to make my first friend.

But after the initial disorientation and homesickness, I discovered that California wasn’t all that bad a place to live. In fact, it has a variety of advantages I didn’t enjoy in Minnesota. In less than one hour I can be sailing on the Pacific Ocean, and in four hours I can be hiking in the Sierra Nevadas. To add to the pleasure, two-thirds of the year the skies are clear blue and the days pleasantly warm. After living in California it is hard for me to remember why I was so reluctant to leave behind the mosquitoes and the humidity of midwestern summers and the ice and dead car batteries of Minnesota winters.

As natural as it is to be reluctant to leave behind our physical existence on earth, we need to remember that the end of life here is the necessary transition to the beginning of a new life in heaven. And what a life that will be! Heaven will be more beautiful than the most dazzling sunset, more satisfying than the most delicious meal, more joyful than the birth of a first child.

Best of all, heaven will be home. After living as aliens on earth, our heavenly Father will welcome us with open arms to our eternal home where pain and heartache won’t even be a memory, and where we will be able to enjoy an intimacy with God and with our loved ones that we had never imagined to be possible.

Death is an ending, and endings are painful. Leaving behind the known for the unknown is never easy. Yet death is also a beginning, the beginning of a life so far better than what we know now as to defy comparison. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25–26).

Through his grace and power our almighty God is able to take that which is evil in itself and use it to accomplish something good. Death is an evil, but in the hands of God, that’s not all it is. Through Christ’s resurrection it has also become a means of good. The evil of death has become the beginning of a new, abundant, eternal life in heaven.

Preparing For Death

Because death is an enemy, it is entirely appropriate to grieve when a loved one dies and to feel anxious about our own future death. Knowing that death is also the beginning of an infinitely better life provides us with comfort to assuage our grief and courage to face our fears. But there is one thing death is not. Death is not a bridge that we can cross when we come to it. It is an event for which we must be prepared. It is an event each of us is preparing for every day, whether carefully or haphazardly.

How are you preparing for your death—not your parents’ or your spouse’s or your friends’—but yours? How have you prepared for your death today, or this last week, or this last year? Each time I think about my own death, I ask myself three questions to help me to evaluate how well I am prepared for that day:

• Am I right in my relationship with God?

• Am I right in my relationships with my family, with my friends, with my coworkers? Are there relationships I need to reconcile? Are there words I need to say?

• Am I investing myself in things that will last for eternity?

Unless our Lord returns, I will someday die. I will have to face death the enemy and know death the new beginning. It cannot be prevented. But there is a great deal I can do to prepare for it. And the time to begin healthy and earnest preparation is now.

Can an American in Kenya truly go home again?

I doubt many north american Christians have given serious thought to missionary parking problems. But some days of my four years in Kenya, parking formed the most imposing barrier against the Lord’s work. One day in particular, I searched frantically for a space in downtown Nairobi, a region of bustling streets and high-rise office buildings. I was late for an appointment with John Mpaayei, an Oxford-educated African church leader I had been trying to see for months.

Reaching Mpaayei’s office panting and dishevelled, I apologized for my appearance. “I didn’t want to be late,” I explained. I remember a faint smile passing over Mpaayei’s grizzled face. I had not lived in Kenya long enough to know that an old man like him could not possibly mind a difference of 15 minutes in my arrival time. But he knew missionaries. He knew how we hurry.

In view of the obvious urgency I had placed on our conversation, the vagueness of my questions was embarrassing. Youth for Christ had invited me to come to Kenya and help start a magazine for African young people. Mpaayei had worked with many different missionaries. He knew the problems. How could I avoid them?

He looked at me quite sharply, perhaps with a trace of amusement again. “Oh, we have had such wonderful missionaries come to Kenya,” he said. “Some powerful personalities. People who could do almost anything. Sometimes I think they are almost too capable. You know, sometimes they have overwhelmed our people. We have been intimidated by your capabilities.”

He paused and looked straight at me. “If you see any spark of initiative—blow on it.” Then he repeated himself. “Any spark of talent or initiative, even if it may be wrong—blow on it.” He laughed, and that was all I got out of him. He would not elaborate.

I had heard that Africans communicate in parables, but that was my first encounter with it. I think I learned something about how Jesus’ disciples felt. A parable, if not developed into a fullblown sermon, seems flimsy, simplistic. You don’t quite see why the speaker has placed such emphasis on it. But Mpaayei’s words, over a period of months and years, ate away at my thoughts. I came to think they were the best advice I’d had, when I understood them better.

Crossing Culture

My wife and I arrived in Kenya full of enthusiastic ignorance. The news media gives a picture of Africa as one huge, superating wound, infected by endless coups, droughts, and outrages against humanity. It had been hard to imagine what daily humdrum life would be like. I knew Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, was a large city, but could not picture what scenes in the street would be. Some years before, the newspapers had printed a photo of Henry Kissinger standing in Nairobi with Jomo Kenyatta and some colorfully dressed tribal dancers; would I find such dancers, in their monkey-fur capes, on Nairobi streets? Or were they a relic preserved for tourists?

We found no dancers in the streets, but pretty black secretaries dressed in the latest styles. Three-piece business suits mixed with turbans. Once in a while you glimpsed the pink blanket of a Maasai tribesman, or a man with earlobe holes you could push a fist through. You could hear a dozen languages in a single coffee shop. We saw horrible slums and beautiful, green parks where monkeys lived, like squirrels. Just outside Nairobi, within sight of the skyscrapers, we saw giraffes and zebra grazing the plain. We feasted on the sights and sounds: Nairobi is one of the most fascinating cities in the world, a place where many worlds meet.

Missions means crossing cultures, moving in those different worlds. Two peoples whose ideas of rhythm vary radically must learn to move together. For me, a Presbyterian and the son of a Presbyterian, this meant learning an African style as different from latter-day American Presbyterianism as I can imagine: broad, full of gusto, formal in its grand procedures but highly spontaneous in its details, and unembarassed by disarray.

I had lots of ideas about the “right” way to start a magazine. After all, I had been invited because of my experience, my technical expertise. And putting out a magazine in Kenya is little different, technically, from putting one out in America. But technical know-how is not what makes a magazine successful; it is not really what makes any Christian work successful, anywhere. Technical skill is necessary, but far more crucial is getting your communication culturally apt—finding work for people that fits the way they feel about themselves; using words and choosing subject material that rings an inner chime in readers.

And this, like Mpaayei’s advice, sometimes utterly puzzled me. For instance, I soon realized that in order to publish a magazine we would have to train writers; almost no Christian writers were available. But consider this “personal sketch” submitted to me by an aspiring writer at one of Kenya’s theological schools:

“Mrs. Mull is a personality you can hardly dislike. She has a slim, tall, well-tissued body. Her body is proportional. She has a rather round head that fits properly to the neck. A nice straight hair caps the head. It’s neatly kept. Frequently, she keeps on placing it back when it falls on the slopes of her face. How the trunk attaches itself to the hips is admirable. The legs adhere comfortably to the girdles. Her walking is gracious. It’s characterized by some slow, skippy steps. These steps compel the rest of the body to move with some gentle vibrations. Her arms swing alternatively with irregular reaching for her hair as she walks. Truly she is a figure you can hardly ignore.”

I hasten to add that Mrs. Mull is an attractive but thoroughly modest middle-aged missionary. But this student, like all of our writers, knew English as a second language. He obviously had more trouble grasping its fine points than some. But on the other hand, he evidently had a keen eye—at least for Mrs. Mull. How was I to discern whether he (and others) should be encouraged to write, or encouraged to think of other fields? And how to help him?

More than anything else, I encouraged. In practice I saw the wisdom and importance of Mpaayei’s words: I blew on sparks. Some were real, and flamed up; others were imaginary and died. But you only need a few sparks to make a blaze.

The day came when Kenyans were really making decisions, final decisions, about what to put in the magazine. They took this leadership role with firmness. Even though I had learned quite a lot about Kenyan rhythms, I was not sure I approved of their choices. But the Kenyans’ choice of material, and their way of putting it together, was like putting a match to a firecracker. Their leadership made a tactile difference from mine—it clicked; people talked of the magazine in surprised tones. Suddenly it made African sense. The circulation, which had been rising anyway, took a sudden leap.

I began to understand Mpaayei more fully. Christian ministry begins with the perception of a need for warmth. But too often missionaries warm things up by doing calisthenics: much bustling activity that does, indeed, keep you warm so long as you keep jumping. But blowing on sparks injects a different dynamic. A fire is a self-sustaining and spreading phenomenon that requires no sustained outside input; it converts local material. The only outside agency is the breath of wind that encourages a spark into flame.

And I understood something else. When you blow a spark into fire, it warms and illumines you.

I went to Kenya to teach. But I found myself taught—my life illumined and warmed by that Kenyan fire. While some of my Kenyan friends gradually caught from me a grasp of western-style publishing, they gave me a glimpse of the world seen through Kenyan eyes.

Kenyans And Babies

When our daughter Katie came into the world, she must have received more hand-knitted sweaters than any American baby in history. By Kenyan custom, when a baby is born to a friend, you must visit in the home (the hospital doesn’t count) and bring a gift. You must also hold the baby, and too bad for the baby if she is sleeping. We were flooded with guests, several a day for months. The birth of a child brought us to common ground with our new friends.

It also subtly changed the direction of our thought about babies—that is, about human life. You often read impatient references to poverty-stricken countries that will not practice birth control. Kenya is one of those countries, for though U.S. aid funds a strong family planning program, Kenya has a population growth rate that, at 4 percent, is among the highest in the world.

Experts cite reasons for that, such as that an indigent farmer sees children as a form of social security. This is true, but does not go to the root of Kenyan thinking. For Kenyans, babies are just good. They need not be good for anything. They may bankrupt economic plans, disrupt careers, create social chaos. That does not change their fundamental state: they are, just in being, blessing. They thus bring joy and show that their parents’ life is not futile.

So it is very hard for an ordinary Kenyan to make sense of a proposal to limit his family. And hardly any Kenyan, no matter how educated, can grasp the western custom of waiting a few years after marriage to have the first child. They listen to our reasons having to do with adjusting to marriage, establishing ourselves financially, buying a house, and the like, but nothing clicks. These are problems, but babies remain a good—a fundamental good. Why limit good? A baby’s blessing goes deeper than the blessings of money and convenience.

After a while I was not so sure they were wrong. They eroded my confidence in our American hierarchy of values. I still favor birth control. But I would rather err on the Kenyan side of valuing human life than on the American side of valuing economics. Kenyans taught me that.

Kenyans And Money

They taught me other new ideas about money. I had expected to be moved toward a simpler life in Kenya, and I was. But the change came in a different way than I expected.

Living beside acute poverty, I had thought, would increase my sense of guilt at the world’s inequities. I welcomed such guilt, because I thought it would force me toward generosity. I did not want to look away from the misery of poverty.

We certainly saw it. Whatever goes by the name of poverty in the U.S. is wealthy by comparison. We stayed in the homes of people who don’t see $100 a year in cash. They eke out a living for a large family on two acres of land. They have no welfare plan: if they run out of food, they starve.

Yet they welcomed us with great warmth, showering us with gifts. We tried to be generous, but they always outgave us—and with gusto. They did not act poor or broken down.

We often visited the home of a Youth for Christ evangelist. Gilbert, his wife, and three children lived in three tiny rooms with a cement floor and a shared privy outside. They cooked on a small charcoal grate. The wind howled through thousands of cracks in their walls. One day a large cardboard-covered crate arrived at the office, bearing a graphic arts camera. Gilb was thrilled. He took the cardboard home and nailed it to the inside of the walls. That cut the wind.

They were very poor, yet I have never been in a more welcoming home, where happiness dwells. I loved to visit them because of the spirit that shone around them.

I had expected to learn the horror of poverty. I learned instead that money has limited value, both for good and for evil. I kept up with American news through Time magazine, which was as always wringing its hands over the state of the U.S. economy. All that worry began to seem slightly silly to me when I thought of Gilbert. Money and the lack of it matter, but not enough to match the dead seriousness accorded it by our age.

I am not, God help me, trying to paint a portrait of idyllic poverty under the tropical sun. Poverty is a mean, tiresome, occasionally deadly burden. I believe perhaps more strongly than ever in generosity toward the poor. But I am not sure the final income levels matter so much as the human kindness behind the sharing. If the poor became rich I doubt it would make them better or happier, and I doubt the world would be a better place—unless they became rich because those of us who can share, did so out of love. This human love, and the equally difficult love which accepts the gift thankfully, are what I long to see increase. Kenyans helped teach me that such love matters more than money.

Kenyans And Faith

A third source of illumination was the Kenyan reverence for God. Office workers crowd Nairobi’s city parks at lunch hours, sitting on the grass to eat. Nearly any day you find bands of Christians (and Muslims, and members of other religious groups) preaching to these crowds. But you can wait a long time without hearing a preacher heckled. Most people pause respectfully to listen.

Call this superstition if you like, but that respect made our magazine possible. Readers would not drop a magazine as soon as they found a reference to God. We could sell a Christian magazine on the newsstand, alongside Time, Playboy, and local secular magazines. Non-Christians as well as Christians bought it and liked it, so long as it spoke to their concerns. Step magazine is, in fact, currently the highest-circulation magazine in both Kenya and Zambia.

This openness about religion was exhilarating and illuminating. Our American society, while religious, keeps religion boxed in. Newspapers keep religion on the religion page. TV confines it to Sunday morning, and “religious” channels. I sometimes imagine an extraterrestrial creature coming to earth determined to learn about human culture. Landing in America, he gets a TV and watches it nonstop, thinking that since the TV takes him into our homes, our hospitals, our government institutions, it will offer him a good quick course in human culture. If he tuned to the major networks, how long would he watch before he realized that some human beings still pray and go to church?

Christians in America have been tamed into a special-interest group. It is not yet so in Kenya. Christians there retain the possibility of affecting their society wholistically. Kenya gave me a renewed sense of Christ’s rightful power over culture. I felt how unhealthy our own awkward, hesitant mention of Christ is, because I adapted to a culture where such hesitance is unnecessary.

Back In The U.S.

I am back in the U.S. now, having completed my Kenyan assignment. Worshiping in large, active American churches, I am struck by the contrast with Kenya. The activities of our church in Nairobi were limited primarily to Sunday morning services in a single large room with cement floor and tin sides and roof. Here it takes two pages of the bulletin just to list the activities of the coming week for the carpeted, well-equipped multiple rooms of the church. The services, timed to the minute, move carefully and professionally through their paces. Every nuance of worship is tucked into place.

We enjoy it. We bask in our American wealth of capable leaders, trained musicians, soft seats, good books, good sermons, good organization. In such an environment Kenya seems very far away.

Like many returning missionaries, I do not feel completely comfortable at home. My experiences have made me an in-between man. I can never belong completely to Kenya. But I no longer completely belong to America, either. In Kenya I saw life from another angle, and an insight is something you cannot retreat from. I cannot quite slip back into my old slot.

I notice now that commitment to missions is very weak. Yes, the American church keeps sending out missionaries, and there are pockets of revived concern. But for the average church member, and perhaps the average pastor, missions floats along on a river of memory, not a dramatic conviction that the church cannot be true without deep concern for the uttermost parts of the earth.

Some churches are simply so preoccupied with their own needs and programs that the rest of the world seems only hazily real to them. Missions has become a sideline, an afterthought they support but will not bleed for. Other cultures and churches may be interesting to them, but they do not recognize them as their own flesh and blood.

Thus a missionary may be admired, but with the wrong kind of admiration. People admire the sacrifice I made in giving up “a good career” to go somewhere no one knows much about and be forgotten. This often translates to, “How wonderful that you were willing to waste your life serving the Lord!” The worst ignominy of a missionary is that often his home church finds his work not quite important enough to rate a slot in the Sunday evening service, that graveyard of secondary concerns.

As I look at the American church, I sometimes wonder if we are oblivious to the trend of history. Are not those things we take the greatest pride in often just what will soon seem archaic, like buggy whip factories in the age of Henry Ford? For only the eternal things are worth setting our hearts on, and there will be no isolated American church in heaven. Our programs, buildings, and institutions will all burn up. Only people will pass through the fire.

But not people as isolated individuals. In heaven we will find ourselves in a great crowd, and (perhaps to our surprise) we will be thrown in with people very unlike ourselves. Jesus is calling his people from every nation under the sun, and from every age. We will join these brothers and sisters in a multi-cultural chorus, mixing Kenyans and Americans, twentieth-century men and Moses. We will sing one song, despite our radically different sense of rhythm.

I take it as axiomatic in the New Testament that the kingdom of heaven is what we are to live for, long for. Heaven teaches us how to separate reality from fantasy, for only what we will find there is dependably solid. Heaven is what Hebrews calls “the city with foundations.”

We more easily think of heaven as the unreal, for it is yet invisible, and its full revelation waiting for some future time. But when Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, he had in mind its urgent reality.

Are we preparing for this? One aspect of preparation is to make sure that the missionary’s insight, in bringing the warmth of a foreign fire, is not disregarded. Strangely, in our age of highspeed communication the people in other parts of the world have become less real to us than they were to our grandparents. They cared that millions of Chinese were dying without a Savior. We have trouble caring about, or believing in the existence of, people in the ghetto a few miles from our door.

But these people are the stuff of heaven. They will endure. Our programs will not.

We are to remain, perhaps eternally, Americans. Revelation 21:3 paints a picture of the end of history with cultures remaining distinct: “They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.…” (Most translations, as Ralph Winter points out, mistranslate “peoples” as “people.”) We will retain our own culture, apparently. God intends Johnny Cash to sing with Saint Augustine and with David, yet each to retain his own accent and style. But we will sing together one song. The more the parts, the more splendid the music.

And this is not only true in heaven. It is true on earth. It is the lesson John Mpaayei taught me: when I blow on others’ sparks, I myself am warmed by the fire. Every church struggles to look outside itself, but the more we extend our borders and care for people unlike ourselves, the closer we come to being the church of heaven. Such a church has joy, has power, has fire that sustains itself and grows, consuming all around it.

Seen this way missions is no afterthought. It is very close to the heart of the gospel, for it plants our feet in eternal country, the country Christ lives in. If we preach a gospel that is not for others, for others as different as can be, it becomes no gospel at all. For a gospel that cannot be sung in heaven is unworthy of the name.

Undisciplined living is blighting the church. Could you be part of the problem?

“One of these days I’m going to get it all together.”

“I wish I hadn’t lost my cool and said those things.”

“Sorry I’m late; I guess I’ve just never been very self-disciplined.”

How often have you heard—or made—statements like those? How many of us really have ourselves under control? Most people think they are in control, but are they really? Probably more are controlled by other people, by circumstances, by the mass media, by the distorted values of contemporary society.

Perhaps the best measure of who is in control is not our actions but our spontaneous reactions. How do you react when a driver tailgates you for miles, then passes and cuts sharply in front of you, nearly causing a collision? Do you honk the horn, shake your fist, and mutter (minced) oaths? If so, some stranger’s reckless, thoughtless driving has controlled you and determined your behavior. Do you respond in kind to surliness and harsh words? If so, you are more controlled by others than controlling. The Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “No person is free who is not master of himself.” And no person is master if he or she allows the actions of others to dictate reactions.

Ours is most assuredly an uncontrolled, undisciplined age—an age of self-indulgence. “If it feels good, do it,” and “If it works, do it again and again” are the prevailing mottoes. The seven deadly sins have become an accepted lifestyle. Many of the problems we face today—economic, environmental, political, moral—are largely attributable to the lack of self-discipline. Nor has the church escaped the blight of undisciplined living; perverted values, wasted time, dulled thinking, flabby bodies, and distorted emotions provide ample evidence.

We have heard and read much in recent years about the gifts of the Spirit, and rightly so. But without the spiritual grace of self-discipline the gifts will be unused, misused, or ineffective. We have heard perhaps somewhat less frequently about the fruits of the Spirit, but very little about the final fruit: self-control. Yet without self-control, love may become saccharine sentimentality or consuming, self-defeating ardor; joy may become heady euphoria that keeps us on the mountaintop building shrines; peace may become complacency, patience may become leniency; kindness may become blandness; goodness may become self-righteousness; faithfulness may become slavishness; and gentleness may become weakness.

The negative devaluation of such words as discipline is, for C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape, one of “the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years.” The apostle Paul admonished young Timothy, “Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7, NASB)

What Self-Discipline Is Not

Note that self-discipline is neither godliness itself nor the means to godliness. If discipline led to godliness, the most disciplined individual would be the holiest—and holiness would be a result of human works. The most exacting disciplinary regimen is powerless to make a saint of a sinner; it can only make a very regimented sinner. On the other hand, neither is lack of self-discipline necessarily sin, although it can become sin, for, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins” (James 4:17, NIV).

Self-discipline is not mere asceticism, as shown by Paul’s warning against ascetic practices in relation to gnosticism (Col. 2:23). Further, self-discipline is neither immoderation nor constriction. Accordingly, the self-disciplined person will be serious but not somber, doctrinal but not doctrinaire, steady but not stodgy, upright but not uptight. According to an old Chinese proverb, “Excess paints a snake, and then adds legs.” We must not be undisciplined in our efforts to achieve self-discipline.

Finally, self-discipline is not legalism. Spiritually self-disciplined individuals are forbearing in a dual sense: they refrain from certain thoughts and deeds, holding themselves in check; and they control themselves under provocation, reacting to others in a loving, patiently restrained manner.

What Self-Discipline Is

Self-discipline is the crowning fruit of the Spirit, cultivated and nurtured by Spirit-filled believers. Genuine self-control is Spirit-control. There is no contradiction here. Just as we are commanded to “work out your own salvation” (Phil. 2:12), working out what God has worked in, so it is necessary to nurture the fruit of the Spirit. Seven words form a compact definition of self-discipline: “For to me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21).

Genuine self-discipline necessarily involves the whole person, all of our faculties: spirit, mind, heart, body, will. Because they fail to recognize this crucial point, most “self-help” programs do not produce genuinely self-disciplined persons—only certain limited curbs and temporary controls. One can be physically disciplined enough to win at Wimbledon but be so undisciplined emotionally that he cannot control childish temper tantrums and embarrassing social gaffes.

Where and how, then, does one begin in one’s desire to become more self-disciplined? For the unbeliever, the place to begin is with repentance, receiving Christ as Savior and being made spiritually alive. For the believer, the only logical and scriptural place to begin is with the Holy Spirit filling us and working through our spirits.

The Believer’S Daily Dozen

To have a disciplined spirit, the believer needs his or her “daily dozen.” First, we need daily prayer (Ps. 86:11). Self-discipline is both a cause and effect of prayer. Without it, we do not really pray, a truth suggested by Peter: “Be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray” (1 Peter 4;7, NIV). (Moffatt renders the verse: “Steady then; keep cool and pray!”) But how can we get cool and stay that way in such a frantic world as this? Would you believe through prayer? “We can really pray only when we are self-controlled, but we become self-controlled through prayer?” Right. It is one of those gracious (as opposed to vicious) circles.

Along with daily prayer must come daily disciplined praise (Ps. 72:15), daily keeping of our commitments (Ps. 61:8), daily Bible study (Acts 17:11), daily self-denial (Luke 9:23), daily death to self (1 Cor. 15:31), daily renewal (2 Cor. 4:16), daily fellowship with believers (Acts 2:46), daily encouragement (Heb. 3:13), daily sharing of our faith (Acts 17:17), daily giving (Acts 6:1), and daily vigilance (Prov. 8:34). In a real sense, genuine self-discipline is not only a fruit of the Spirit, but also a fruit of the spirit.

Divine Thought Control

Also crucial is a self-disciplined mind. In his booklet Your Mind Matters, John R. W. Stott notes that “self-control is primarily mind-control.” Do we achieve a disciplined mind by thinking disciplined thoughts, or do we think disciplined thoughts because we have a disciplined mind?

The late A. W. Tozer, in his book That Incredible Christian, said: “To be heavenly minded we must think heavenly thoughts.… God must have all our thoughts if we would experience sanctification of our minds.” Does this mean that if we have “heavenly thoughts” (and what precisely are they?) long enough (how long? 5 years? 50?), we one day acquire a “heavenly” mind (and just what is that?)? Undoubtedly there is some truth in what Tozer says, for Paul enumerates what we should think about: whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy (Phil. 4:8). But disciplined (or “heavenly”) thoughts simply cannot be produced by an undisciplined (or “unheavenly”) mind. Did not Jesus himself make this principle clear in his statement that “a bad tree cannot bear good fruit” (Matt. 7:18)?

Solomon indicated that our thoughts reveal what kind of mind we have. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7). What do you think about in your unguarded moments—when you are riding along in the car or before you fall off to sleep at night? The answer will underscore the fact that we all need to cultivate well-disciplined minds.

Note that I said cultivate, not acquire, a self-disciplined mind. Every believer has the mind of Christ, Paul says (1 Cor. 2:16), yet is exhorted to “let this mind [mindset or attitude—a different word from the one used in 1 Corinthians 2] be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5). Paul told Timothy that “God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love and of a [self-controlled mind]” (2 Tim. 1:7). The Greek word translated “sound mind” in the King James Version is sophronismos, sometimes rendered “self-control.” The same word appears in the account of the Gadarene demoniac, who was not only uncontrolled but also uncontrollable, for Satan, the author of chaos, was in control. But when Jesus, the epitome of perfect control, had performed his miracle, the man was seen to be sitting, dressed, and “in his right mind” (sophronouta)—perfectly controlled.

Whaling

I.

The experienced ones, thank God, had left me on the ship

With a few other novices, while in their tiny boats

They sought for whales. I stood on deck

Sensing that I should try at least to spear

Whatever whale came close enough to be controlled.

Controlled? Once caught on my harpoon, I realized,

That whale might overwhelm not only me

But all I stood upon. For it could start

A Nantucket sleighride, slashing through the waves

Yanking the heaving ship by its taut rope

My guts wrenched by the roughness of the ride

As I gasped breathless in the tearing wind.

Or it could smash the whole ship with its fluke.

Or it could sound straight downward to the floor

And drag me ship and all to sure destruction.

I asked my comrades: Where’s the knife to cut the harpoon rope

In case I hit a whale too strong for me?

But no one knew of such a knife, or how to use it.

II.

Jittery, high, I jounced upon the deck.

The sea around me boiled with whales.

Waves, towering, churned with whales.

But I cast no harpoon. Instead, perforce,

I grasped the rigging of the shrinking ship

That bucked beneath my feet.

The sea rocked hard at me, the ship, and all the mighty whales.

III.

On the salt air within I heard a Whirlwind Voice:

Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook?

I answered, No.

I must rely on You.

The deeps are Yours.

—Virginia Ramey Mollenkott

Divine thought control is a provision discussed by the apostle Paul: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4–5, NIV). Certainly this passage refers to the false arguments of people we encounter, but also to our thoughts. It is necessary for us to “let God remake [us] so that [our] whole attitude of mind is changed,” as Phillips paraphrases Romans 12:2, letting positive alternatives take the place of negative thoughts.

If I were walking across the university campus, for instance, and saw a pretty female student, the natural impulse might be to indulge a lustful thought. But the peace of God that stands on guard duty at our hearts and minds (Phil. 4:7) turns the evil thought aside. If it is merely repressed, it will return again and again, seeking admittance.

A positive alternative to repression might go something like this: “Lord. I thank you for feminine beauty and for my normal response to it. Thank you for the lovely wife you gave me. She is really something: a great lover, superb cook, wonderful mother to our children. Bless her right now and give her a good day. And help me to be a good, faithful husband and father.” Then I could pick up some flowers on the way home to let her know how much I appreciate her. What was potentially an ugly, undisciplined thought has been transformed by God’s grace into a disciplined occasion of beauty.

Disciplining Our Emotions

For a while, we might be able to keep our undisciplined thoughts to ourselves and even to cloak our undisciplined spiritual life, but lack of self-discipline seems to show up nowhere so glaringly as in our emotions. Perhaps this is because of the primacy of the emotions in our makeup and because emotions are responses to relationships. We experience negative emotions and lose control of the more positive ones because, as Jeremiah says, “The heart is the most deceitful of all things, desperately sick” (17:9, NEB) But God has made provision to “stablish our hearts unblameable in holiness before God” (1 Thess. 3:13). How? Through the most powerful of all emotions: love. Note the preceding verse of the chapter: “The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men.”

The logical and scriptural place to begin the disciplining of our emotions is with love, for love is such a powerful emotion that it will “cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:20). Note how it works. Because God first loved us, we love him (1 John 4:19). If we truly love God, we will love other people (1 John 4:7–8). And to the degree that our love matures, it will dispel fear (1 John 4:18), as well as depression, jealousy, anger, hatred. It is precisely the love of Christ, Paul says, that exercises a disciplining, constraining influence upon us (2 Cor. 5:14).

Love, along with the leading of the indwelling Spirit, enables the self-disciplined heart to choose which of the following responses to emotional stimuli is most suitable:

Perhaps the easiest and most natural response is simply to acquiesce to the stimulus and express unrestrained emotion. Doing otherwise, the currently popular rationale goes, is to harm the psyche, squelch spontaneity, and give us nasty “hang-ups.” But “letting it all hang out” is one thing; expressing an emotion suitably is quite another.

The opposite alternative is not to respond at all, to disregard the stimulus as the armored knight in Albrecht Dürer’s Knight, Death, and the Devil looks steadfastly forward, ignoring the distractions of evil all about him. Or one may repress or suppress emotions—the former being a mere forcing of the emotion into the subconscious, the latter involving conscious dismissal from the heart and mind.

Another possible response is to assess the stimulus carefully and address oneself and God about it. Such assessing can lead to harnessing of an emotion, transforming a potentially negative emotion into a positive one.

Many of our emotional battles are virtually lost before they begin because we have established predispositions to react in an undisciplined fashion. We do not lose emotional control in a moment; the predisposition has been forming, germinating for some time. The emotionally self-disciplined person continuously clothes himself or herself with the Lord Jesus Christ and does not make provision for the flesh (Rom. 13:14).

Physical Self-Discipline

Like the lack of emotional self-discipline, the lack of physical self-discipline—by gluttony, lust, and sloth—leads to obvious results: unconditioned bodies. “I discipline my body and make it serve me,” Paul said, “so that, while heralding to others, I may not myself be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27, Berkeley). The initial step in achieving physical self-discipline is to realize that the body is important for at least four major reasons: (1) God fashioned it masterfully and values it (Ps. 139:14–15); (2) Jesus assumed a body (Phil. 2:7–8); (3) the Holy Spirit indwells and sustains the bodies of believers (Rom. 8:9, 11, 26); and (4) the body is the seat of the soul and spirit.

Paul admonishes us to “glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:20). What does it mean to glorify God in your body? The Greek word for “glorify” is the source of our word “doxology.” Very simply, my body, your body, should be a Gloria Patri, a walking doxology!

Have you ever thought about the fact that physical self-discipline will play a significant role in determining the effectiveness of our service for Christ and our future rewards? Paul said, “We have all to appear without disguise before the tribunal of Christ, each to be requited for what he has done with his body, well or ill” (2 Cor. 5:10, Moffatt). Therefore, Paul says that “every one of you should learn to control his body, keeping it pure and treating it with respect, and never allowing it to fall victim to lust” (1 Thess. 4:4–5, Phillips). “The Lord wants to fill our bodies with himself” (1 Cor. 6:13, LB). DO we care enough to let him?

Self-Discipline Modeled

Jesus Christ is both the model and the means of self-discipline. His perfect self-discipline is shown nowhere more clearly than in his incarnation (Phil. 2:5–8). He willingly set aside his rights, his prerogatives; he was not concerned with his “image,” making himself “of no reputation”; he showed submission in taking upon himself the form of a slave (service always demands great self-discipline); he condescended to be made “a little lower than the angels”; and not only did he choose to die, but he chose the most ignoble and ignominious form of death, that of a common criminal.

Jesus showed exemplary physical self-discipline throughout his life on earth, but especially in his victory over the three-fold temptation, each involving solicitation to some form of physical indulgence: (1) indulge your physical needs and desires; (2) flout the physical and presume on God’s protection; (3) spare yourself physical suffering and pain.

Because Jesus was “tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin” (Heb. 4:15, NIV), we may assume that he manifested all forms of human emotion, without losing control. For example, in the two cleansings of the temple, he illustrated how to be angry without sinning, as Paul admonishes us to do in Ephesians 4:26.

Someone may be thinking, “Yes, but he is God, and since God is the essence of order, how could Jesus not be perfectly self-disciplined? But we’re mortals with an evil nature that causes us to fail.” It is true that as mortals we fail when we operate in the flesh, but we have available to us the same source of victory Jesus did. As God he was not able to be undisciplined, but as man he was able not to be undisciplined. And by following his example, energized by the same Spirit and appropriating the same divine grace, we too are able not to be undisciplined.

Peter tells us that “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). The word translated “example” here is hypogrammos, a line of script a schoolchild copies in imitation. Jesus is the Word; the indwelling Spirit is our teacher guiding us over the script. Why not begin, with God’s help, your program for cultivating self-discipline?

Discovering dialogue with God.

The purpose of meditative prayer is to create the emotional and spiritual space that allows Christ to construct an inner sanctuary in the heart. He knocks at the door and desires a perpetual eucharistic feast with us. Meditative prayer opens that door to Christ.

Although we engage in specific meditation exercises at specific times, the ultimate purpose of meditative prayer is to send us into our ordinary world with greater perspective and balance. As we learn to listen to the Lord, we gain new, practical handles on life’s ordinary problems by distinguishing between the significant and the trivial.

How do we go about meditative prayer? In biblical times, people were well versed in how to meditate. Today, however, there is an abysmal ignorance of even the most basic elements of this spiritual art. A simple description of the three basic steps into meditative prayer may therefore be helpful.

Centering Down

The first step is sometimes called “centering down.” Others have used the term “re-collection”; that is, a recollecting of yourself until you are unified or whole. The idea is to let go of all competing distractions until you are truly centered, until you are truly present where you are.

Begin by seating yourself comfortably, and then slowly and deliberately let all tension and anxiety drop away. Become aware of God’s presence in the room. Perhaps in your imagination you will want to visualize Christ seated in the chair across from you, for he is truly present. If frustrations or distractions arise, you will want to lift them up into the arms of the Father and let him care for them. This is not the suppression of our inner turmoil, but the letting go of it. Suppression implies a pressing down, a keeping in check; in centering down we are giving away, releasing. It is even more than a neutral psychological relaxing. It is an active surrendering, a “self-abandonment to divine providence,” to use the title of a book by the Jesuit spiritualist Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675–1751).

Precisely because the Lord is present with us, we can relax and let go of everything, for in his presence nothing really matters, nothing is of importance except attending to him. We allow inner distractions and frustrations to melt away before him as snow before the sun. We allow him to calm the storms that rage within. We allow his great silence to still our noisy heart.

Let me warn you at the outset: this centeredness does not come easily or quickly in the beginning. Most of us live such fractured and fragmented lives that collectedness is a foreign world to us. The moment we genuinely try to be centered, we become painfully aware of how distracted we are. Romano Guardini notes, “When we try to compose ourselves, unrest redoubles in intensity, not unlike the manner in which at night, when we try to sleep, cares or desires assail us with a force that they do not possess during the day.” But we must not be discouraged at this. We must be prepared to devote all our meditation time to this centeredness without any thought for result or reward. We willingly “waste our time” in this manner as a lavish love offering to the Lord. For God takes what looks like a foolish waste and uses it to nudge us closer to the holy of holies. Perceptively, Guardini comments, “If at first we achieve no more than the understanding of how much we lack in inner unity, something will have been gained, for in some way we will have made contact with that center which knows no distraction.”

Several things occur in the process of centering down. First, there is a glad surrender to the Lord “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8). We surrender control over our lives and destinies. In an act of deliberate intention we decide to do it not our way but God’s way. We might even want to visualize our bodies being lifted into the intense light of God’s presence that he may do with us as he pleases.

We surrender our possessiveness and invite him to possess us in such a way that we are truly crucified with Christ and yet truly live through his life (Gal. 2:20). We relinquish into his hands our imperialist ambitions to be greater and more admired, to be richer and more powerful, even to be saintlier and more influential.

We surrender our cares and worries. “Cast all your anxieties on him because he cares about you,” said Peter (1 Pet. 5:7). And so we can, precisely because we sense his care. We can give up the need to watch out for “number one” because we have One who is watching out for us. I sometimes like to picture a box in which I place every worry and every care. When it is full, I gift wrap it, place a lovely big bow on top, and give it as a present to the Father. He receives it and once he does, I know I must not take it back, for to take back a gift once given is most discourteous.

We surrender our good intentions and high resolves, for even those can harbor the seeds of pride and arrogance. Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, “Pray for me that I not loosen my grip on the hands of Jesus even under the guise of ministering to the poor.” You see, if we “loosen our grip on the hands of Jesus,” we have lost everything. And so we are to surrender all distractions—even good distractions—until we are driven into the Core.

A second thing that occurs within us as we are learning to center down is the rise of a spirit of repentance and confession. Suddenly we become aware—keenly aware—of our shortcomings and many sins. All excuses are stripped away, all self-justifications are silenced. A deep, godly sorrow wells up within for the sins of commission and the sins of omission. Any deed or thought that cannot stand in the searching light of Christ becomes repulsive not only to God but to us as well. Thus humbled under the cross, we confess our need and receive his gracious word of forgiveness.

We may want to picture a path littered with many rocks. Some are small pebbles, others are quite large, still others are almost completely buried, so we have no idea how big they are. With compunction of heart we invite the Lord to remove each stone; they represent the many sins littering our lives. One by one he picks them up, revealing to us their true character and offensiveness. To our eyes some look big and others small, but the Lord helps us to understand that, when lifted, the smallest pebble has the same weight as the largest boulder. Some rocks need to be dug out of the ground, and while this is painful it also brings healing. When we see the path completely clear, we rejoice in this gracious work of the Lord.

Or the Father may open to us an image of our sin in its totality as a great lump inside—a spiritual cancer consuming and destroying all life. Ceaselessly in our spirit we cry out, “Sin! Sin! Sin! Help! Help! Help!” Then we watch as God’s healing light penetrates our innermost being, dissolving all sin and utterly destroying it. Again we thank him for this gracious salvation, given to us through the work of Christ on the cross.

A third reality that works its way into our hearts as we are being more and more centered is an acceptance of the ways of God with human beings. We are acutely aware that God’s ways are not our ways, that his thoughts are not our thoughts (Isa. 55:8). And with an inner knowing born out of fellowship, we see that his ways are altogether good. Our impatience, our rebellion, our nonacceptance give way to a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings. This is not a stoic resignation to “the will of God.” It is an entering into the rhythm of the Spirit. It is a recognition that his commandments are “for our good always” (Deut. 6:24). It is a letting go of our way and a saying yes to God’s way, not grudgingly but because we know it is the better way.

We might want to visualize ourselves on a lovely beach somewhere observing the footprints of God in the sand. Slowly we begin to place our feet into the prints in the sand. At some places the stride looks far too long for our small frame, at other places it looks so short that it appears childlike. In his infinite wisdom, God is stretching us where we need to be on the edge of adventure, restraining us where we need greater attentiveness to him. As we follow his lead, we enter more and more into his stride, turning where he turns, accepting his ways and finding them good.

Beholding The Lord

As we learn to center down, we begin to move into the second step in meditative prayer, which is “beholding the Lord.” What do I mean? I mean the inward steady gaze of the heart upon the divine Center. We bask in the warmth of his presence. Worship and adoration, praise and thanksgiving well up from the inner sanctuary of the soul. The fourteenth-century mystic Richard Rolle observed that as he learned the gaze of the heart, he experienced real warmth around his heart as if it were actually on fire. He was so surprised at this phenomenon that he kept feeling his chest to be sure there was no physical reason for it. Instead of fear, as we might expect, this sensation brought him “great and unexpected comfort.” Fortunately for all of us, he has recorded the insights of those experiences in The Fire of Love.

Few, if any of us, will have the physical sensations Rolle experienced, but we all can learn the gaze of the heart. There is a lovely little chorus that is popular these days, the first line of which says, “Set my spirit free that I may worship thee.” And that is the yearning of our hearts as we behold the Lord. We love him, we worship him, we adore him. There are inward whisperings of devotion and homage, and perhaps outward shouts of praise and thanksgiving.

Sheep Bleat

The lamb had no speech,

nothing to utter of the wonder

about him. It needed a vocabulary

of earth, rooted in summer,

sugarless yet sweet, boney

but not arthritic, nothing

of glue or wax or fire,

yet still as jarring as cigar smoke

and quiet as a solar eclipse.

Everyone said it was impossible.

But the Creator said, “Bah,”

and left off the humbug.

—Mark R. Littleton

Often it seems that music is the language of beholding. “Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making music to the Lord with all your heart” is how the apostle Paul described it (Eph. 5:19). And who can hinder the spontaneous outbreak of adoration and praise? The great hymns of the church aid us in our beholding, for in an important sense they encapsulate for us the beholding of faithful Christians throughout the centuries. As we sing the great hymns, we enter the communion of saints.

Many times we enter experiences of beholding that go deeper than human words can express. Saint Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with “sighs too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26). And often there are inward yearnings and aspirations that cannot quite be caught in human language. At times the gift of tongues, or glossolalia, becomes a channel through which the spirit may behold the Holy One of Israel. At other times there are experiences of what Saint Teresa of Avila called “the prayer of quiet,” where all words become superfluous. In silence we behold the Lord, for words are not needed for there to be communion.

Often a brief passage of Scripture will aid us in our beholding. We may be drawn to the great vision of the Lord high and lifted up recorded in Isaiah 6:1–8. Or perhaps we will want to meditate on John’s vision of the reigning Christ in Revelation 1:12–18, or even in Revelation 19:11–16. We may be directed to behold the Savior cradled in the manger or dying on the cross.

Most of all, we sense his nearness and his love. Father James Borst said, “He is closer to my true self than I am myself. He knows me better than I know myself. He loves me better than I love myself. He is ‘Abba’, Father, to me. I am because he is.”

As we behold the Lord, we soon learn that we are not only acting but being acted upon. God, the great Initiator, who first drew us into his love and gave us the ability to love him, responds. He who seeks us before we ever seek him responds to our seeking. He is anxious to invade our spirit and to give us all good things. We feel his gaze upon us. He fills us with his “Sabbath rest.” Peace, serenity, joy unspeakable and full of glory—all of this and much more overwhelms us. It feels as if we, by our beholding, have opened the small spillway door of a great reservoir of divine love; then to our great surprise all heaven breaks loose, and we are flooded by divine graces.

Does all this lofty talk of union with God discourage you? Do you feel miles away from such experience? Rather than attempting to scale the heights of spiritual ecstasy, are you just hoping to make it through the week? If so, don’t be disheartened. Many times we all fail miserably short of the goal. Often our meditations never seem to get past our frustration over the unwashed dishes in the sink or the chemistry exam next week. But the little we have experienced reminds us that at the heart of God is the desire to give and to forgive, and we are encouraged to go deeper in and higher up.

The Prayer Of Listening

As we experience the unifying grace of centering down and the liberating grace of beholding the Lord, we are ushered into a third step in meditative prayer, the prayer of listening. We have put away all obstacles of the heart, all scheming of the mind, all vacillations of the will. Divine graces of love and adoration wash over us like ocean waves. And as this is happening we experience an inward attentiveness to divine motions. At the center of our being we are hushed. The experience is more profound than mere silence or lack of words. There is stillness, to be sure, but it is a listening stillness. We feel more alive, more active, than we ever do when our minds are askew with muchness and manyness. Something deep inside has been awakened and brought to attention. Our spirit is on tiptoe, alert and listening.

On the Mount of Transfiguration the word of the Lord came out of the overshadowing cloud saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Matt. 17:5). And so we listen, really listen. We do not do violence to our rational faculties, but we listen with more than the mind. We bring the mind into the heart so that we can listen with the whole being.

François Fénelon said, “Be silent, and listen to God. Let your heart be in such a state of preparation that his spirit may impress upon you such virtues as will please him. Let all within you listen to him. This silence of all outward and earthly affection and of human thoughts within us is essential if we are to hear this voice.” As I have noted before, this listening does indeed involve a hushing of all “outward and earthly affection.” Saint John of the Cross used the graphic phrase, “my house being now all stilled.” In that single line he helps us see the importance of quieting all physical, emotional, and psychological senses.

As we wait before the Lord, graciously we are given a teachable spirit. I say “graciously” because without a teachable spirit, any word of the Lord that may come to guide us into truth will only serve to harden our hearts. We will resist any and all instruction unless we are docile. But if we are truly “willing and obedient,” the teaching of the Lord is life and light.

And teach us he will, if we can but quiet ourselves to listen. Christ is the “prophet like unto Moses” who is to teach us inwardly (Deut. 18:15). In his broken body and spilled blood he did establish the new covenant through which his law is written on our hearts, and we know the Lord because we have heard his voice (Jer. 31:31–34). And he longs to speak with us and teach us. He seeks us that we may have living communion with him. He seeks to instruct us not just in matters of great and eternal significance, but in simple, practical matters that are in reality the matters of eternal significance. He wants to walk with us through our days and give us insight and wisdom to make life’s ordinary decisions: a little insight here on how to be a better father or husband; a little perception there on how to respond to a professor or overbearing boss. He will also teach us about what we like to call the big issues if we will listen: issues of war and peace, issues of sexism and racism, the knotty problems swirling around biomedical ethics, and ever so much more.

There is a danger here, isn’t there? We can get the teaching wrong—history is replete with those who have arrogantly assumed they knew the mind of God on every issue under the sun. There are checks—God’s revelation given to us in Scripture, the discernment of the Christian fellowship—but even these are not completely foolproof. Many have twisted Scripture into a thing of their own, and often the church has failed to listen to the Lord. In spite of the danger, however, we must proceed, for it is the way of life. And I have found that if we undertake our task with humbleness of heart, we can trust Christ to lead us into his way. If we begin to wander off toward some wrong idea or unprofitable practice, he will guide us back. If we are willing to listen to the heavenly Monitor, we will receive the instruction we need. And so we listen quietly, patiently, until clearness comes.

The goal, of course, is to bring this stance of listening prayer into the course of daily experience. Throughout all of life’s motions—balancing the checkbook, vacuuming the floor, visiting with neighbors or business associates—there is an inward attentiveness to the divine Whisper. The witness to this reality is overwhelmingly uniform in all the great masters of the interior life and is represented so well in the famous words of Brother Lawrence: “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.” We bring the portable sanctuary into daily life.

To describe our movement into meditative prayer as “steps” may be misleading. The word may imply something a little too clear-cut, as if each “step” could be sharply distinguished from the others. Such, however, is not the case. All these movements interrelate and often splash over into each other. It is a living experience we are describing and, like all living experiences, cannot be defined too rigidly. The Lord is the creator of infinite variety, and at times he may turn our little steps into one giant leap, or teach us to skip or hop or run or even stand still. In all things and at all times we are to obey Christ.

The makers of The Prodigal believe it will.

The Prodigal, a new dramatic feature film from World Wide Pictures, is being released nationwide this month. Communications expert Mel White interviewed the two men most responsible for creation of this cinematic vehicle for evangelism. James Collier, who both wrote and directed The Prodigal, has directed World Wide films since 1966, including the widely acclaimed screen story of Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place. He also wrote the screenplays for Joni. The Restless Ones, and His Land. Producer Ken Wales is a minister’s son who was an actor before he began producing films in 1964, working with Blake Edwards. He has produced such motion pictures as The Tamarind Seed, and television specials, including the award-winning miniseries of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Collier and Wales were interviewed separately. CT edited and combined the two interviews for this story.

Describe your involvement with World Wide Pictures.

COLLIER: The first film I wrote with Dick Ross was The Heart Is a Rebel, which was built around Billy Graham’s 1957 New York crusade and the one Ethel Waters made. When Ross moved on, in 1966, World Wide gave me a chance to direct. I had always wanted to follow a family after the crusade had left town, and the result was For Pete’s Sake—Pete Harper. I still love that film.

But when the picture was screened at the Director’s Guild Theater, I remember friends coming and giving me that look; it was too much for them The one thing you can never completely have is the respect of your peers. There seems to be hostility toward having deep light in a film. There are friends I don’t invite to see my work anymore because we [both] know they’re going to hate it, and I’m going to get angry because they hate it. So we don’t talk about it anymore.

What is it they hate?

COLLIER: The thought of Billy Graham sticks in their throats. They’re not Christians, they’re not anywhere. World Wide makes without apology explicitly evangelistic films. The Prodigal is a good example. I take issue with people who say such a film does not have a place in the commercial cinema. All the celebrated pictures last year were content pictures: Chariots of Fire—the power of commitment; The Verdict—one man clawing his way out of despondency and trying to stand on his own feet. Imagine what Tootsie would have been like if it had just been a male drag film!

Every film has a point of view. A friend who saw Time to Run said, “There are holes in the story, Jim.” But as a result of that production, over 400,000 people indicated some sort of first-time commitment to Christ and have been contacted by the Billy Graham follow-up offices. That’s what makes it all meaningful and gives purpose to what we attempt to do. The film acts as a sort of catalyst in their spiritual journey.

What’s an “explicitly evangelistic film”?

WALES: For the Graham organization, it is that it contain a crusade, and that it show how people’s lives are changed by a crusade and primarily by hearing the Word of God through Billy Graham’s preaching. I think Billy’s goals for World Wide are that it reach out to people in greater ministry and depth.

How did you select The Prodigal for your next motion picture project?

COLLIER: When Joni was finished, I didn’t have any contact with World Wide for a year; I didn’t have anything more to say. One day Bill Brown [president and executive producer] called and said, “We need a film. Do you have any ideas?” I went for a ride in the mountains, and I told the Lord, “If you have something for me here, you’ll have to do the work, because I don’t have anything; I’m dry.” About an hour later, the thought dropped into my head: “You’ve always wanted to do a modern approach to the Prodigal Son.” I called World Wide back and said, “Well, I do have this one idea.”

WALES: I was excited by the story idea Jim had generated, and about doing a film that would be as well done as anything you’d see in the theater in terms of “Hollywood professionalism.”

COLLIER: The problem with The Prodigal was how it could be updated and happen in the eighties. I was intrigued that it could be a dissection of the Christian family. In a way, it’s a kind of masquerade party, because at the beginning they’re all wearing masks of respectability, and gradually the veneers are peeled away. These people were raised in the church; faith occupies space in their lives, but not necessarily always in their hearts. I didn’t want to pretend that we were talking primarily to the unchurched. I wanted to address our world as I know it.

In one sense, The Prodigal is a Christian Ordinary People in that on one level it’s a spiritual odyssey of one young man. On a deeper level, it’s the story of a group of people. I like the family. I like Scott, the eldest, obedient son, very much; I like the scene where the father asks him, “Do you think I’m a Christian?” The silence speaks to us all. Then Scott says to his father, “I want to live it out, all of it”—the abrasive need to find his own identity in the kingdom. The younger son, Greg, is in a sense the classic second child looking for his own identity.

One critic said everybody in the film is a prodigal. Is that true?

WALES: We could have called it The Prodigals, plural, and been equally right. But when you talk about the prodigal, how much of this wild life does he lead? There are limits to what you can do. I feel that being implicit allows the audience to bring to it all their imagination, their biases, their prejudices. A benefit of the old film censorship was that there could not be such things as explicit sex scenes. That forced the director to be creative and imaginative and to come up with some way to say what was happening, what had been happening, what was going to happen. I think if is much more interesting that way. Now, especially in graphic physical or sexual scenes in contemporary cinema, you get the director’s particular viewpoint of what that is.

COLLIER: I would like to have called the film The Brothers, because I like the salt and pepper of the two brothers—the light and dark in both of them, and their love for each other and how that plays off.

What are the critics going to say when they see this one?

COLLIER: If you live for that, you’re dead. In a way, I feel a film like this should not be reviewed. Some will be offended by Billy Graham preaching; others will be drawn by it. And this is the whole mystery of the kingdom. I showed the film to two friends I knew were interested in seeing what had been done. They were anti-Graham’s appearance just on general principles, because they knew it was going to be a crusade and it would not be dramatic. You see, it’s the dramatic principle that’s violated here—if you’re into the story and suddenly you’re being preached at, you’ve shifted gears. People don’t want to be manipulated.

The Prodigal*

World Wide Pictures; screenplay by lames Collier; directed by James Collier, produced by Ken Wales

This new film from the Billy Graham Association is obviously a labor of love, the work of professionals concerned equally with their craft and their urgent message. Religious conversion is, however, perhaps the most difficult human experience to duplicate in a dramatic setting. It is often like listening to one side of a two-way argument.

The Prodigal is visually stunning. Cinematographer Frank Stanley’s lovely images never betray the film’s small budget and short shooting schedule. It is unfortunate that much of his lush photography will be lost when transferred to the smaller 16mm format and exhibited in churches and community halls ill equipped to screen motion pictures of this quality.

Impressive, too, is the superlative cast: a mixture of veteran actors and relative newcomers who struggle to contemporize Christ’s parable of the wayward son. John Hammond is Greg Stuart, the disillusioned “prodigal” searching for a fatted calf in the myriad dust-laden corners society offers its aimless wanderers. His father (John Cullum) is enthroned at the center of a whirling lifestyle that has spun all those close to him to the outer edges of recognition: Greg to his bohemian existence; older son Scott (Arliss Howard) to an inner-city ghetto where he attempts to rediscover his childhood faith; his wife (Hope Lange) nearly into the arms of another man. In short, there is not one prodigal, but four, each groping down the long road home.

Like all Billy Graham films, The Prodigal challenges Christians and non-Christians alike to seek the healing power of the Great Physician. The film stumbles, however, in its treatment of Greg’s rebellious lifestyle. It is a sanctified view of sin that doesn’t always ring true. He remains an object lesson viewed from the outside. That crucial error is not uncommon in most evangelical films. Too often, in order to be specifically evangelistic, the Christian filmmaker will violate a cardinal rule of good drama—that character, not ideology, dictates plot and action. The beautiful benefactor, the cocaine deal, the near-fatal accident all manipulate and instruct, but are not necessarily an outgrowth of Greg’s character. His degradation and subsequent conversion are designed to communicate the gospel simply and without ambiguity. While essential on Sunday morning, more subtlety is required in a theatrical setting.

Another flaw in Christian films is the strange absence of awe. They require—and are surely capable of—a visual grammar that communicates the brooding presence of a transcendent being. But the Stuart family appears to be speaking into a vacuum. There is talk of Jesus, but never a sense of his presence. Chariots of Fire is powerful because we find an active God working through the life of a character: what he does with his faith is irrefutable evidence of the Power behind it. Likewise, The Prodigal is regenerated by Scott’s efforts on behalf of the poor. His actions articulate his beliefs. Greg’s religious conversion requires the same treatment. An encounter with Christ should propel the action, not end it. Seeing is believing in this visual medium, and meeting the Nazarene is where the story begins. We are, after all, dealing with a resurrected Savior, and the life he lives within us continues to be the greatest drama of all.

Anyway, after these people saw the film, they told me they thought Billy Graham was wonderful; they were impressed. That really pleased me. I wanted Billy to come off well, and I worked very hard cutting that sequence to try to let him be the oracle, the proclaimer I feel he is.

WALES: There needs to be some well-prepared preview testing. If I were in charge and able to maximize this situation, I would have stopped at our final cut and taken the time to preview the film with different groups, with controlled situations, measuring responses with small groups of people, eliciting responses from them, hearing what they have to say. We did that when we filmed Islands in the Stream at Paramount. But what always happens is that suddenly you’re facing a release date and you can’t take the time. I think The Prodigal will be very successful, but I wonder if it will reach the heights it might have.

COLLIER: I don’t think you can be in the marketplace and not expect cabbages. When Two A Penny opened in London, the British critics had already written their reviews—before they saw the film. I thought: That is so unfair—they already knew what they were going to feel about it.

What did they say?

COLLIER: One very opinionated gentleman said it was “a long commercial from God.”

How do you respond?

COLLIER: You can’t. But there’s a difference between Britain and this country. In Britain, if a film gets a bad review they all run to see it and decide for themselves. Here, reviews can kill a film, because we’re more followers.

I was able to do [some new] things in The Prodigal. We were able to imply that people have sexual lives, and that’s never happened before, you know. I tried to have unspoken moments where the secular audience could fill in the gaps. I could never do the love scenes, for example, that were in An Officer and a Gentleman. I don’t think it’s dramatic. It smacks of voyeurism to sell tickets.

WALES: When you start a Billy Graham film with a guy who’s tossed his family aside, is living on an island with a Swedish girlfriend and growing marijuana—that’s a bold step for most Christian organizations even to tackle. So I think it’s commendable when we’re willing to say there’s a rupture in the family; willing to say a mother is tempted with having an affair. All of these are dilemmas we as humans—as Christians—face.

COLLIER: We can’t use the language the world uses. It used to be a running joke in Hollywood after the success of The Hiding Place that any script that came into a major studio that had “God” in it and didn’t have “damn” behind it was immediately sent to World Wide. But I would like to be a bit more explicit.

How can you work under those strictures?

COLLIER: You have to. I always take it as the turns in the road and I have to get around them. But World Wide doesn’t have the ability to romance what their dream is. And that’s a shame, because here, in the media capital of the world, film and television is cranked out daily like great sausage links, encircling the globe and affecting the lives and minds of people. It either says we are totally self-contained and nothing more than ourselves, so, “Take what you want, get everything you can, because it’s a very short birthday party.” Or else you say, “Hey, there’s more. There’s another whole dimension to life that you’re not exploring at all.” Now World Wide has attempted to say that. I think of World Wide as a lighthouse in a great storm where there’s a power failure. The light may not be very strong; we don’t do that many films. I’ve tried to tell the world stories about Jesus, and put all of ourselves in it. You attempt to be as real as possible within the perimeter.

I wish there were five World Wides. I really believe in the statement they’ve made over the years. I would like to take all those old films and have a forum with them—show them on Christian cable. Where, in the media, is our lifestyle ever shown? We need writers and opportunities to elucidate the Christian experience in a way that will draw men to the Cross.

I feel World Wide deserves honor for its place in history. Billy saw the power in motion pictures. He didn’t always know what to do with it, but he saw the power of it years ago. In the early years, they didn’t understand the relationship of the screen to an audience. They treated it like an arena. I remember seeing The Restless Ones in the balcony of an auditorium in Bakersfield, and I thought, “If I knew they were going to show films in big barns like this. I’d only shoot in close-ups,” because you couldn’t see anything from up there.

Is it common practice for World Wide to be associated with so many proven professionals in the industry?

COLLIER: The goal—to be solidly professional—has always been there. That tone was set by Billy Graham and Dick Ross in the early years. The studio hires fully union crews and top production people who have just come off major shows. It makes for some “earthy” encounters. Behind the camera, every production is a curious mixture of human and holy.

WALES: A number of people who had worked with me on other projects joined me on The Prodigal—in particular, Frank Stanley, the cinematographer, who did East of Eden with me. He is able to work at a fast pace, and that helped all of us stay with the schedule—it’s not at all difficult to say, “I’m going to take eight hours to light a scene.” Another important person was Bill Creber, the production designer, who has had three Academy nominations and was art director on The Greatest Story Ever Told. All down the line, outstanding people said they wanted to work on it. They also read the script and felt it said something about the dilemma of the modern family in crisis. They wanted to be able to say, “Okay, I like that; that’s worthwhile.”

Technically, do you feel the film shows on the screen all that prowess?

WALES: When I tell people we did it for just over $3 million and in 30-plus days, they’re astounded. It put a lot of terrible restrictions on us, especially in terms of music. Usually, you get down to the things you’re going to do in postproduction or at the end of the film—such as sound effects, optical effects, doing the music—and suddenly the picture may have gone just a little over budget because of weather or unknown forces. So everybody panics and starts taking away the budget money needed for those areas. I’ve seen picture after picture in the secular industry destroy any chance of monetary return because there is not a willingness to put in just a little more, or to stay the course for the money needed to finish the picture.

What do you think are the yardsticks that determine success?

WALES: In the film industry they normally are how many people see the film and how much money comes in at the box office. Another yardstick is critical success: how many critics say it was marvellous, and if a campaign can be built around critical acclaim. For World Wide, as I view it, they’re not too concerned whether it makes money. They’re more concerned, and rightly so, about its impact upon the people who see it. Will it change lives? I think The Prodigal is also made for the Christian family at large, a chance for them to see themselves as they are.

When you first read the script, what was your response to it?

WALES: I wanted to see what Jim had in mind for Billy Graham. Since the story was to have a strong evangelistic theme and nature, how Billy Graham was to be treated in it became very central. I was pleased to see that Jim had even extracted excerpts from Billy’s sermons on previous occasions, to make them fit the theme of The Prodigal and kind of construct a sermon for the crusade itself.

COLLIER: The question was how to get the crusade involved. It had to be dramatically correct so that the crusade didn’t just pop in at the end of the story. Bridges were built so that the audience would not be surprised—little bumps along the way to prepare them that this is going to be a crusade city.

I noticed the texts Billy used in thesermon didn’t have to do with the Prodigal Son.

WALES: Jim changed the script as it began to develop. Billy preached for two nights in Spokane in the same wardrobe, so we were able to shoot over two nights and have it match. We really appreciated his doing that—he must have been glad to change into a fresh shirt and suit the third night, because it was very warm in Spokane! Time became a factor, so Jim extracted the parts that especially dealt with God’s love. In the film, we see the boy sitting outside the stadium, and he is really pondering what Billy is saying. At the end, we see him go toward the platform, ostensibly to make his commitment. Then we see him making his way home the next day. He goes up the steps, and we freeze-frame him before he reaches the doorknob. Jim purposely wanted to leave it at that, open-ended. We don’t really know how much of a change there’s going to be, because commitment takes a different amount of time and of God’s working to become effective ultimately in a life.

Isn’t it the history of religious films that crises are always resolved in the meeting, and the trip to the altar resolves all of the tensions?

WALES: I hear what you’re saying. I think it’s important for everybody—World Wide and all of us as Christian communicators—to realize that we need to understand the bases of psychological and theological communication. People are so much more attuned to reality and real answers. They want to know where the hurt comes from, and they don’t want a Band-aid or an easy cure. My hope would be that there would be a further widening of what World Wide could do in saying, “Here are the problems to be faced afterwards.”

But the film raises so many issues that are all resolved when they’re walking forward.

WALES: Do you think that they’re resolved while they’re walking forward?

Absolutely not. That the father is upper-class materialistic, and that the son lives in Factrytown—what is Christian in terms of those issues is not even discussed.

WALES: I think one of the strengths of the film is that the mother stays in the stands and doesn’t go down on the field. I was concerned about this being so nicely wrapped up in a package, that suddenly the whole family goes down, and they’re all smiling and go off into the sunset. I think if there’s a future in World Wide, it may very well lie in their being more willing to face these things head-on.

COLLIER: Of course, we could take the lives of the Stuart family and come up with an entire miniseries. But World Wide Pictures is in the business of offering people new beginnings. That means they will always be criticized for not saying enough. We see our responsibility to offer the folks sitting out there in a darkened theater the chance to start again. That is the gospel. The audience is first aware of The Prodigal theme as an instrumental under the main titles, and it is reinterpreted at various moments throughout the story. It finally bursts into lyrics as the prodigal makes his long trek home:

Now, Lord, you’ve made my whole life new.

And I can change because of you.

I’ll start now. I have today.

Does the Christian audience want to be entertained as much as the secular? How will they respond to a rather discursive film?

WALES: The difficulty has been the number of films that have been made presupposing Christians will see it no matter how good it is. It is a mistake to believe they will buy tickets because they’ll all come to see a Christian film—and forget that you’d jolly well better make a good film. In essence, what these filmmakers are saying is that Christians do not have taste, that they’ll give “A” for effort and put down five dollars for it. But there hasn’t really been a definitive situation that shows what Christians respond to. If you’re talking about Chariots of Fire, lots of Christians went to see that—many, many Christians. They had something they could rally around.

COLLIER: I think periodically there will be event pictures that will break through, a la Chariots of Fire. I think the industry is ready to make money from Jesus—they know that Jesus can be bucks for them. They’re ready to serve that audience; they know it exists. They just want to find a commercial medium. Also, I would like to see cable explored. I would like to see some of the great missionary stories done as adventures like Shōgun—Adoniram Judson, for example. I would like to have a corps of writers, of creative people, think tanks to say, “All right, we’re going to attempt it if we’re given the money.” There will be other Chariots of Fire. I do not know that Christians will make them.

What’s the difference between that film and The Prodigal?

COLLIER: Productionwise, none. I think you might take the crusade out of The Prodigal and make some slight adjustments. But the exhilaration of Chariots is hard to match. An absolute requirement for a film today is that the audience goes out and tells others they saw it and they felt good.

WALES: It needs somehow to be shown that indeed Christians respond like other people, but they will be supportive of a film that has some centrality of theme that is Christian. If they don’t go and support it, and it’s well done, then it’s all over. Chariots of Fire would not have been as successful in this town if it had not had the parallel story of the Jewish runner. If it had been just the story of the Christian runner, it would have been thought of more as occult, kinky—something like that. But Hollywood is really uneasy generally with Christian films.

COLLIER: I think the situation is getting better. The Hiding Place came so close to being nominated for Academy Awards. In fact, the Academy asked for 150 black-and-white glossies for the morning when the nominations were handed out, because they were so sure Jeanette Clift was going to be nominated. In Las Vegas the odds were for Jeanette and Julie Harris both to be nominated in the Best Actress category. But when the time came at the Academy, and when we went to the Golden Globe Awards where Jeanette was nominated for Best Newcomer, I sat and realized that being outside the major studio system, “the club,” World Wide would never be able to play at the club’s table. Humanly, for me, it was very hurtful. But I’ve made some peace with that now.

What would you say to pastors and Christian education leaders about film generally, and about our habits as Christians with films?

WALES: It really is important to pay attention to what you put into your mind. It is a sponge, and it soaks up all the things it sees and hears and senses. You can’t just go to a steady diet of Taxi or Death Wish and think it’s not going to have an effect on you. Those are things that are being stored.

At the same time, Christians should be encouraged to stretch their world, their viewpoint, to understand more the stories that are told—the dilemmas of people—and not put on blinders to limit their view of life. Many things we see in film we don’t agree with, we don’t like. But probably more often than not that is fairly accurate to actual life as it is lived around the corner.

I hope people will sense that The Prodigal has been an attempt to present a level that respects their intelligence, one that says, “Let us share with you in an improved approach, an improved level of storytelling.” The resolution is not there. People who see the film should let me know what they feel about it. How do they respond? What stories are meaningful to them? Also, if in the future we are able to translate important stories into film, then Christians must support them. If there is no support, there is no way we can make the films.

The Star Wars they see, the Pink Panthers they see—all genre—Bergman films, everything. Christians are alert, bright, sensitive, intuitive, and they are people of faith. They are also people of vigor, and people who like to live life and have fun, too. It would be my great hope that that would be conveyed. The key to The Prodigal is Jim Collier. His concept and idea of telling a story of a family in crisis, of being able to show all of us as Christians where our lives may have been, and may be, is exceptional.

COLLIER: We screened The Prodigal in MGM’s big preview theater to check the color quality from their lab. A studio executive dropped in to watch the screening out of curiosity. When the film ended, she just sat with her head down, crying. Ken went over to speak to her. She said to him, “I can’t talk now. Maybe later.” Eventually she told Ken, “The Prodigal opened up edges in me that I’ve kept covered for years.”

You never know how God will use a film or with whom he will use it. That’s why you ignore the odds that say, “Quit trying. It can’t be done.”

Here I Stand, I Think

We live in a relational day when most congregations are saying, “Don’t confront me; feel with me, relate to me.” Gone is the thundering of “Repent or perish!” Most preachers, it seems, just say with Saint Paul, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling—while I work out mine.” “Ye must be born again!” has been replaced by, “Let’s all try a little harder!”

Architecture confirms our easy togetherness. Church buildings have grown round with comfy pews that circle about easy-on-the-eye, colored chancels with no pulpits. Koinonia oozes around 1 John 4:8 pulpit banners. Ecumenics live! Anything that nettles relationships between brothers is played down. Suddenly we are one—gloriously one, blindly one. “You go to your church and I’ll go to mine and we’ll walk along together.” Above all we must preserve the “we” feeling. I have often wondered how the Diet of Worms would have gone if Luther had played by our rules.

There, in a theological showdown, all would have gathered, Germans and Italians, with a desire to “work things out.” With all sitting there, filled with potluck fare of the church supper they had just enjoyed, one can hear again the old inquisitor asking his question, “Luther, did you or did you not write these books?”

“Well,” says Martin, “in a manner of speaking: I was working through some problems with my self-image at the time, and I really think, Your Grace, that when we’re down on ourselves it is so easy to get down on other, really good people. Perhaps I have been a little negative.”

“I’ll tell you what, Martin. Let’s just take your books off the stands, and we’ll all work a little harder on getting along together.”

By the time they had all broken into prayer cells and regrouped in the basement for pie and coffee, the Reformation would have been lost.

A friend of mine recently heard a sermon on Moses and the burning bush. He was told that the bush had only been struck by desert lightning, and that the voice of God that came from it was the natural consequence of a man who had been shrugging off his emancipation responsibilities for four decades. At the end of such nonexposition there is little left for Moses to say to Pharoah except, “Let my people go; okay, old buddy?”

Most of the great prophets of history have done monologues, not talk shows. Here and there we sometimes find a young Jeremiah who doesn’t care so much about togetherness as the pleasure of God. The world may be hungry to hear a sermon that doesn’t go well with pie and coffee.

EUTYCHUS

Authority And Liberty—Balance Needed

One thing Nathan Hatch did not mention in his excellent article, “Yesterday: the Key that Unlocks Today” [Aug. 5], is the fairly recent concept of “progress” in history. While you can see the idea germinate during the Enlightenment, it really flowers in the nineteenth century to support the onslaught of the Industrial Revolution and its counterbalancing social movements. Even Darwinism was based on something better constantly evolving.

Evangelical Christianity embraced human progress to a large extent (e.g., Finney at Oberlin) while still retaining the Christian need for redemption. Without this balance of pointing out the human condition as falling short, however, the idea of human progress in history results in either making the group, or the individual, the goal. Modern social and political movement’s thus become an end in themselves or we self-help ourselves into becoming gods.

ROBERT V. MOSER

West Bloomfield, Mich.

Nathan Hatch correctly asserts that the historical process reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of individuals, groups, and ideologies. Yet I find his historical analysis of religion and politics in revolutionary America to be inordinately critical of the evangelical role.

While properly noting some significant departures from Christian thought in early American life, notably slavery based on race, Hatch fails to acknowledge that American political institutions were designed with specific limitations in scope and prerogatives, thereby conforming to the biblical ideal of governmental servanthood. By insisting upon a proper balance between authority and liberty within the society, our forefathers were able to enhance and preserve the legitimate civil rights of each citizen. It should be clear that the underlying principle involved here—steadfast yet unoppressive order yielding responsible freedom—closely parallels the pattern established by God through his commandments and his regenerative work within the heart of the New Testament believer.

CHARLES ZAFFINI

Columbus, Ohio

Moderates Vs. Immoderates

I appreciated James Hefley’s article, “The Historic Shift in America’s Largest Protestant Denomination” [Aug. 5], Many moderates defend their position by saying they are the “friends of missions,” claiming that conservatives are forsaking this historic Baptist emphasis. As a teenager in a church pastored by Patterson, I learned the meaning of missions as he led 50 young people in planting churches in Canada during three summer tours. A decade later, these groups have outgrown meeting in homes and are now thriving Baptist churches with missions of their own.

If Southern Baptists truly believe God’s Word is inerrant, then they will be compelled to lead people to Christ. Paige Patterson demonstrated to me that only through an immoderate confidence in God’s Word can anyone be compelled or empowered to be an evangelist or missionary.

TAMMI LEDBETTER

Evansville, Ind.

I find it rather ironic that no mention was made of the fact that it was the “moderate” leadership of the SBC over the last several decades that has made it the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. This does not speak very well for the fundamentalists’ “domino theory”—that those who do not agree completely with their understanding of biblical inspiration will not contribute to church growth. The truth of the matter is that Christian ethics is not their strongest characteristic, and that their super churches have a very poor record in giving to the SBC mission.

REV. JAMES BRIDGES

First Baptist Church

Fort Madison, Iowa

Charlie Brown Theology

Your reporting of the “Ominous Implications of the Bob Jones Decision” [July 15] made the mistake of saying repeatedly that the “sincere beliefs” of BJU have been violated. That’s Charlie Brown theology: that sincerity is all that counts. A lot of people have been “sincere” in what they did. The Rev. Jim Jones called his colony religious, and he believed in what he was doing. But just labeling it “religious” doesn’t make it so.

Neither does slapping on the label “religious convictions” make it so. Bob Jones is using the Constitution to cloak its own socio-political philosophy, and in so doing it is no better than the secular opportunists who call themselves a church to avoid paying property taxes.

DONALD O’POLKA

Whitesboro, N.Y.

Thanks For The Truth!

It was with pleasure that I read “Alcoholism: Even the Church Is Hurting” [Aug. 5]. As an evangelical and a professional in the field of alcoholism treatment, it pleases me greatly when the truth about the illness of alcoholism is clearly presented.

I also much appreciated what Dr. Spickard had to say on the issue of alcoholism as a disease. So often evangelicals who ignore the physical, mental, emotional, and social aspects of the problem are as ignorant as the physicians and alcoholism counselors who ignore the spiritual aspect. They are both guilty of reductionism. It is necessary for us evangelicals to see God working not only in direct, miraculous ways, but also through physicians, medications, counselors and a host of other relationships. Spickard’s remarks regarding the church’s response to the alcoholic and the problem of alcoholism should be read carefully by every pastor and church leader. He is surely correct in his assessment. I have counseled several evangelical Christians who are alcoholic. For all of them, the last place they felt they could or would get help was the church. It seems paradoxical that in the evangelical church, where the truth about God and his redemption are so proudly and loudly preached, we are not known as having the love and compassion that our Lord displayed to those who suffer in sin and sickness.

REV. WILLIAM E. MILLER, C.A.C.

Alexian Brothers Medical Center

Elk Grove Village, Ill.

Cartoon—A Cheap Shot!

Your cartoon in the July 15 issue was a cheap shot at the United Methodist Church, although perhaps we deserved it. It is regrettable that the work of the United Methodist Task Force on Language, alluded to in the cartoon, has become so enveloped in the issues of twentieth-century American sexism and sexuality that the genuine theological concerns and issues at stake are too easily lost or ignored. Surely we would all do well to remember that such extremely important theological words as “Lord,” “king,” “slave,” “servant,” “ghost,” “master,” “Father,” and even “God” must always be understood within the context of the age and culture in which they were and are used—whether that age be the first, seventeenth, or twentieth century. Language changes, and certainly English is no exception. This should properly be the concern of all serious theologians, whether or not they are evangelical. Think of all the words (and spellings) for “God” in the Old Testament.

REV. LUNDY HOOTEN

Saint John United Methodist Church

Rio Grande City, Tex.

Good Or Bad?

I appreciated Philip Yancey’s positive and restrained review of When Bad Things Happen to Good People [Aug. 5]. Evangelicals who attack the book’s message fail to remember the author is a Jewish rabbi who could not be expected to give a Christian perspective on the problem of suffering. Kushner’s explanation of life, thus, is truly pre-Christian. It is full of authentic human experience and religious insight, even biblical insight, but it falls short of the gospel.

Pastors should not condemn the book but use it in much the same way we use the Old Testament, especially the Psalms. Kushner leads us to within one step of salvation to eternal life in Christ beyond this world of pain. Someone other than a liberal rabbi must lead readers in that final step.

REV. CHARLES E. HAMBRICK-STOWE

Saint Paul’s United Church of Christ

Westminster, Md.

Divinely Inspired?

I would class “The God Who Sings” [July 15] with the inspired (neoorthodoxically speaking) writings of the Good Book, because it exonerates the “sad, glum, bored, prosaic …” God of modern evangelical ecclesiology (i.e., “churchiness”). It also gives careless choir directors and choirs a hard time, it challenges hymn writers, lauds the music critic, encourages the acoustician, rebukes the “soloing accompanist,” approves the minister of music, and honors the “Source” of the gift of music. In fact, the entire issue of July 15, including the ads, was “divinely inspired.”

RAYMOND M. KINCHELOE

Regina, Sask., Canada