Eternal Perspectives

Apparently, something I wrote in my last post has led a few people to believe that I am on the verge of regular blogging once again. I fear such reports may be a tad premature. One observation, offered by William Meisheid at Beyond the Rim, states:

As I expected, Mike Russell at Eternal Perspectives has started to come out of the other side of his journey through the “Dark Night of the Soul”. There are only two branches on that road and Mike did not disappear into hopelessness, no matter how close he may have felt he was to the edge of the cliff.

William is at once correct and incorrect in what he says here. The purpose of this post is to explain, if anyone is particularly interested, where I am and where I’ve been, as well as to speculate on where I might be journeying next.

Allow me to begin the middle and work both ways. I am, I suppose, standing at a fork in that path which has been and is my life. The operant word is “standing,” for though I know which path I will not take, I do not know how to - or why I should - traverse the other. I stand now with both feet firmly planted in mid-air.

How I Got Here

I became a Christian just over 31 years ago (Dec 10, 1974) shortly before my 25th birthday (Dec 29). As I have detailed in my testimony (a link to which may be found elsewhere on this page), in my infinite wisdom of a 21-year-old, I had given up on finding anything worth committing myself to and had chosen a life of hedonism and nihilism. There is pleasure in sin for a season, of course, and I thoroughly enjoyed my “wanton and riotous” lifestyle for more than five years. God, however, pursued me in His typically relentless style and brought me to the point of clearly seeing both my need for and the salvation He freely offered. From my human perspective, I chose to believe; from His perspective, He chose for me to believe. Both are equally true.

For whatever reasons, I became deeply committed to the local church. This was somewhat peculiar, since I chose - or did God elect me? - to become a dispensationalist, a group notoriously negligent of the local church at times due to its eschatological, blind devotion to the invisible, universal Church, the Body of Christ. My decisions to get first a Masters Degree and then a Doctor of Ministry were motivated by my desire to serve the local church more effectively. I prepared, prayed, and made myself available for vocational ministry.

More than 30 years later, I have come to realize that my hopes and dreams of being on staff at a church were and are just vapors, the vain imaginings of my own mind. I was never sought nor desired by any church to be on staff, although some dangled a carrot on a stick before my face to keep my illusory hopes alive. With 56 just a week or so away, I have finally come to accept the fact that a staff position is not in the works for me.

The sense of lostness which has resulted from this realization has been overwhelming and utterly unforseen by me. Beyond the bounds of my family, the passion of my life has been to serve the church and the people of the church as effectively as possible. I do corrective work as a counselor, but I have always desired to do preventative work: the lack of discipleship and dearth of leadership have pained me. The phone never rang, however, and the call to fulltime ministry never materialized.

Where I Am

I continue to stand at the fork in the road because I have no motivation to go down either of the paths before me. I am not going to turn away from Christ and renounce that which I know to be true; I will not betray my friends, children, wife, or Savior by doing something so stupid. I continue to believe all that I have ever believed about God, salvation in Christ Jesus, eternal life, the resurrection, judgment, and a multitude of other biblical teachings.

The other path, though, does not appeal to me. It is a path that continues in the same direction that I have been moving for three decades: working as a counselor, going to church, being involved in ministry (as I was in the past), and building up the local body of believers - as well as any who might stumble upon this blog. I know it is a good path and a right path: I just don’t have the heart to take one step in that direction. I don’t want it to be and do not believe it to be my path.

The loss of passion - or “Fire in the Belly,” to use Keen’s title - leaves me flat. Some might say that I made the local church an idol and am now paying the price; my reply is that anyone who thinks that is an idiot. My desire to serve has grown out of my singular ambition as a Christian: to know God better tomorrow than I know Him today. My seeking of Him results in and produces the passion for the church - or so I thought. It would be more accurate to say that I limited God in the areas He might use me. Perhaps He does not want me ministering in and through the church; clearly He has not desired that for 31 years.

I have been helped - but not yet rescued - in my wrestling with life by a variety of sources. Chief among those sources has been J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and many of the books and articles written about him and his sub-creation of Middle-earth. I have watched the movie (it is a singular movie: only at the close of “The Return of the King” does it say “The End”), listened several times to the 13-hour BBC adaptation of the book on cd, and am re-reading the myth for the third or fourth time.

The writings of others about Tolkien’s classic have been immensely helpful, as well. The first ray of hope came from Amanda of Wittingshire, who chose for her Nov 12th poem a prophecy about Aragorn:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”

–JRR Tolkien (1892-1973)

The first two lines encouraged me; the next two challenged me; the final four did not apply to me at all. It was to mark the beginning, however, of my climb out of the deep grave where my hopes of church ministry were recently buried. I am indebted to her for her choice of poems that Sunday.

I then began re-reading books about The Lord of the Rings, noticing things I had overlooked previously and being reminded of important insights I had forgotten. I skimmed Mark Eddy Smith’s Tolkien’s Ordinary Virtues, which discusses such values as generosity, simplicity, friendship, faith, community, atonement, wisdom, stewardship, perseverance, and love. I next turned to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth by Bradley Birzer. He reminded me that

Undoubtedly, Sam would rather stay at home and garden and farm than walk into the heart of Hell itself. But God has a different task for him, and Sam accepts his duty, as all good men do.” - p. 73

Of greater import and impact were books by Ralph Wood and Matthew Dickerson: The Gospel According to Tolkien and Following Gandalf, respectively. Remarking on Sam’s hard-earned wisdom, Wood writes:

On the one hand, the tales that do not matter concern there-and-back again adventures - escapades undertaken because we are bored and thus seek excitement and entertainment. The tales that rivet the mind, on the other hand, involve a Quest that we do not choose for ourselves. Instead, we find ourselves embarked upon a journey or mission quite apart from our choosing. What counts, says Sam, is not whether the Quest succeeds but whether we turn back or slog ahead. One reason for not giving up, not quitting, is that the great tales are told about those who refused to surrender - those who ventured forward in hope.”

Dickerson, however, resonates with me most deeply. His focus on and elaboration of a simple statement of Aragorn’s has confronted me with the realization that I must do something and not nothing:

If there is one character in whom, and for whom, the importance and difficulty of choice is captured, it is Aragorn. When Éomer first meets Aragorn, he senses something deep and noble about this stranger to Rohan. ‘What doom do you bring out of the North?’ he asks. ‘The doom of choice’ answers Aragorn (TT, p. 36). In other words, when Aragorn answers, ‘The doom of choice,’ he is really answering, ‘freedom’; freedom is his fate, his destiny, his punishment. Though only four words long, that answer is truly one of those sentences that - like the proverbial picture - is worth a thousand words. Many different understandings are layered there. Even the word doom is loaded. In its Anglo-Saxon roots, it refers simply to a law. Yet it can also connote a judgment or sentence passed down, a destiny or fate laid upon one, or some terrible thing waiting to happen. It is also one of the root words of freedom, or ‘free-doom’: the state in which one’s doom, or destiny, is free for one to choose.

“At one level, then, Tolkien is making a statement about all the race of Men: Choice is our doom. Not only are we free and able to choose, it is our destiny as beings of free will that we must make choices - and then live with the consequences of those choices!”

In short, Dickerson instructs me that I cannot linger too long at this fork in the path. I must make a choice and I will not only endure the consequences of the choice, but I am responsible before God to choose wisely.

Serendipitously, I came upon a series of posts - “Lord of the Vocations” - at Kelly’s Blog, a blog whose simple name conceals considerable depth and insight. (The posts, in order, may be found by the following links: I, II, III, IV, IVb, V.) Kelly explains,

A vocation is a ‘calling’– a job that each one of us has been given to do in service to our neighbors. Tolkien emphasizes the fact that vocations are not chosen; rather, they are given to us . . .” - Lord of the Vocations Part II

“Sam is to be admired because when it comes to his calling, he sees it through. As the first vocation post noted, it’s often the long waiting and the daily drudgery that are our crosses to bear in our individual vocations; the temptation is to take the easy way out and do our own thing rather than to wait patiently.” - Lord of the Vocations Part IVb

What has frozen me in my steps until yesterday has been the question of vocation: I had always hoped, planned, and forseen my vocation or calling in the context of fulltime ministry in a local church. But that has not been my doom nor my calling. There is a vocation that predates my affair with the church; indeed, it was present in my life prior to my salvation. From my teen years onward there has been one constant in my life that, although at times neglected, has remained.

I have always been a writer.

Even before spending more than a decade as a writer for a daily newspaper, I was writing letters, stories, allegories, and poems to whatever audience would read them. My writing has generally been well-received and validated (I won a state Associated Press award); more importantly, I have always loved to write. I have studied writing and communication for almost forty years, seeking to discover effective ways to evoke visceral responses while engaging cognitive capacities.

Although the possibility of me earning a living by writing is virtually non-existent, it is my calling and vocation. It is to that calling that I must return.

There remains a problem, however, and it is no small obstacle. I have yet to ignite or have ignited the burning desire to share with others what I consider to be of value and significance. I do not know all the reasons why, but at least one roadblock has shown its face: I have grown weary of the criticisms of dullards and small-minded people who would reduce God and our common faith to a lock-step, stay-safe lifestyle. I consider such people to be fools in the proverbial sense:

Pr 12:15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel.

Pr 17:10 A rebuke goes deeper into one who has understanding than a hundred blows into a fool.

Pr 18:2 A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind.

Pr 19:1 Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than he who is perverse in speech and is a fool.

Pr 20:3 Keeping away from strife is an honor for a man, but any fool will quarrel.

Pr 23:9 Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words.

Pr 29:9 When a wise man has a controversy with a foolish man, the foolish man either rages or laughs, and there is no rest.

Such people make me tired. I will not interact with them anymore; if they leave just one foolish comment regarding a post, I’ll block them permanently. I’ve grown intolerant; I’ve grown to value my time.

I find the creativity and beauty of God all around me, in the works of the saved and the unsaved alike. I refuse to be a bumper-sticker Christian, i.e., one whose every conversation or communication must draw attention to the fact that I am a believer in Jesus Christ. My automobile bears a plastic fish: it is inside, near the gearshift. I need to be reminded who I am; if others can’t see it in my behavior and life, then a bumper sticker isn’t going to make them repent and trust Christ as Savior.

I suppose I could motivate myself to write by railing against the church and the ubiquitous dolts who seek to paralyze it, but I don’t want to write out of anger or condescension. I must wait until it is a love for others that stirs my heart and mind, calling me back to my calling.

In closing, I will admit to this much: I have begun to design a second blog that will be devoted to timeless truths and principles as expressed in a certain context. When the time comes, I will continue to utilize this blog to voice confessions, commentaries, or whatever else would not belong at the other site.

Thank you for bearing this inordinately and uncharacteristically long post. The good news - for me, at least - is that I am beginning to feel the need to write once again.