Societal Morality – Do vs Be

When it comes to societal morality there are certain things we may more readily associate with what is right and wrong. This is assisted by the system of laws we have set in place. To murder is wrong because jail time is associated with such an act. To speed is wrong (I think people still believe this…) because there is a fine associated with speeding. To launder money through a casino or some other shopfront is wrong because the laws constitute so. To lie is wrong in court. To lie to a neighbour…. It’s almost tempting to say, ‘well depends on the circumstance…’

These codified rules make it seem like morality is ultimately a matter of doing or not doing things. So perhaps you could be a complete jerk, but a law-abiding jerk. Conversely, you could be the most beloved person at the office, but a thief and a liar who gets locked up behind bars, and becomes the most beloved person behind bars!

David Wells puts it this way, “The law is an exceedingly blunt instrument when it comes to controlling human behaviour. There are many things that are unethical that are not illegal. Most lying, for example, is not illegal but it is always unethical. Our criminal and civil laws can control only so much of our behaviour. It is virtue that does the rest. And that is precisely what is been eroded in this self-orientated, self-consumed culture.” (p.29)

Virtue ought to shape our lives. We are to ‘be’ virtuous people not merely ‘do’ what virtuous people would do. But what is virtuous? Once it was defined according to who God is. We mirrored the characteristics that we saw in God (the communicable characteristics that is, such as love, grace, mercy etc.). Now, what is the spring of virtue? It is the self. We look within ourselves to find what is good, and so if we are authentic to ourselves, we are virtuous. And it is this that Wells says is eroding the very foundations of culturally accepted virtues. 

So as society collectively reimagines what is good, it is doing so as each individual looks within themselves. We have this strange and ironic paradox at work. Every individual in a society is looking within themselves to find out what is good to do according to what they want, and so the collective good becomes the notion that what an individual sees within themselves is good. This leads us all to a dead end. We don’t look outside of ourselves, to God, but within ourselves. Wells says, “When God – the external God – dies, then the self immediately moves in to fill the vacuum. But then something strange happens. The self also dies. And with it goes meaning and reality. When those things go, anything is possible. Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World, does not seem so far off into the future after all.” (p.31)

The solution is easy, right? We simply need to look outside of ourselves. Look to God. Look at God and see his great character. Live our lives according to this, as mirrors of God, as image-bearers of his glory.

That is very easy to say but each of us can testify how hard that is. Our selfishness draws us within ourselves. And it does so in strange ways. For some of us as we are drawn into ourselves, we only see the darkness of ourselves all the more and it disgusts us. But we can’t stop looking in self-pity. For others of us, we look into ourselves and we are blinded by our own greatness (purely subjective of course), and we can’t stop looking, understandably. If only you knew how beautiful my insides are.

It is not easy to look beyond ourselves to God. I trust our subjective testimony to this is sufficient. We need many signs to point the way, we need many warnings to deter our wanderings. We need glimpses of the greatness of God to keep us facing true North like rays of sun breaking through the canopy of the forest. So it is that God’s word points the way. So it is that the society around us is itself a warning to our wandering feet (sadly our experience tells us this). And so it is as we look at Christ in his word we do get glimpses of something greater, someone to live our lives for and to live our lives by.

“This is why we must come back to our first principles. And the most basic of these is the fact that God is there and that he is objective to us. He is not there to conform to us; we must conform to him. We do not go inside of ourselves to find him. We are summoned to know him only on his terms. He is not known on our terms. This summons is heard in and through his word. It is not heard through our intuitions.” (p.32)

Wells, D. F. (2014). God in the whirlwind: How the holy-love of God reorients our world.

God’s character – an obscured climb, but a vista not to be missed.

To behold the character of God is a sight worth working for. Much like a great vista can be obscured by shrubs and rocks, trees and mist, the glory of God can be obscured by the world around us, encroaching ever closer to our eyes and putting us out of focus, even misleading us.

God is love. God is holy. Both are in unity with one another, neither are at odds with one another. But that is not necessarily readily accepted by many. That is because our culture affects how we see things, not excluding how we see God. We see God through his all sufficient word, the Bible. That is of course as our minds are renewed by God’s spirit working in us through his word. Oppositely however, we can be conformed to this world. And now our conformity to the world affects how we view God because it affects how we view his word.

How are we going to be renewing our minds? Simple in one sense. We must be reading the word of God. The word of God must be confronting us regularly, and shaping us. However this task is not going to have its effect if we cannot focus long enough, linger long enough, to receive the truth of God from his word. “Every age has its own challenges. This is one of ours, it is the affliction of distraction.” Says David Wells (p.18).

One of the ironies is, however, that we are so distracted because we have such an abundance of good things. Our standard of health is high, our choices for entertainment – endless, the range of experiences we can have – vast, the feats that we can accomplish – great. And yet with all the things we could do, we are a depressed people, a lonely people, a sad people. It is a paradox (see p.22). Stimulated in every conceivable way, yet not stimulated enough.

In our Western world where we experience an abundance of blessings (generally speaking) and yet a deprivation of emotional and mental well-being, we want God to provide more blessings while fixing our emotional and mental burdens. ‘Please God give us more stuff,’ we secretly hope for in our hearts (or not so secretly), and give me an emotional perk up, and encouragement.

Now there’s nothing wrong with these things. But these are the desires of everyone around us. Hopefully it’s a little bit unnerving for us to realise that our hopes of God’s provision towards us are really no different from the God-less hopes of others.

What might be happening? Perhaps we are addressing the god that is within us, and not the God that is outside of ourselves, the objective God.

The centre of reality does not come from within, it is not subjective. The centre of reality is God who is not within us, but ultimately outside of us, in front of us. He is encountered in his word (of course God dwells within us by his Holy Spirit, but I’m more thinking here about God’s transcendence).

God does meet our needs, more than we could possibly fathom. Ultimately these are spiritual needs. And every spiritual deficiency within us is met by the one who is outside of us, the Lord Jesus.

Yes God does meet our physical, emotional and psychological needs. But the problem is that we are so inwardly focused that these needs become our god. And in a strange cyclical downward spiral, our needs are our gods and we want our god to meet our needs. That’s to say, our needs are our idols, and we want our idols to meet our needs.

But we need to clear our eyes from the mist. We need to climb higher to see more. We need to take ourselves to the heights that the Bible takes us to see God’s holy-love towards us and to be re-orientated by it. As we see God’s holy-love displayed towards us in Jesus, it is then that we see our needs met.

Wells, D. F. (2014). God in the whirlwind: How the holy-love of God reorients our world.

Proverbs of Livingstone Rd

Like a bee returning to the hive, is every conversation to house prices.

Beware the skin of the scantily dressed, it demands your attention but never gets enough.

The slugger brings his hand to the remote, but cannot even press the power function.

Answer a fool in the comment section and you will be like them.

The fool says, “There is neither right nor wrong”. But his way is right in his own eyes.

Food for the eater, wine for the drinker. Uber delivers them both.

The sluggard works his upper body alone. His legs are like that of a newborn fowl, in the day of trouble they will surely fail.  The diligent are made of iron, his legs are of bronze, fine bronze from the mines of Western Australia. He will never stumble.

Another sequel, another season. But it’s never as good as the first.

The fool’s speech is like the obnoxious exhaust of a modified sports car. Only he thinks it sounds any good.

Words posted in haste are not forgotten with time.

Discovering the Particular Love of God

Redemption is the process whereby an individual guilty of sin before God is saved from the just punishment of sin, namely death, through the vicarious death of Jesus. There are some particulars regarding redemption that are worth teasing out because they provide an abundance of joy and greater understanding of the particular love God shows to us. As we mine God’s word, the gold we find does not become scarcer the deeper we dig. Quite the contrary, the veins become thicker and richer the deeper we find ourselves searching God’s word.

We may start with some basic understanding of the Gospel to begin with, as is fitting. We learn about the historic death of the Lord Jesus on our behalf and we are called to repent and place our faith in Jesus. Going hand-in-hand with this, we seek to obey the call to live a holy life. All the while we have a vague idea that this world is not our home, but ultimately heaven is.

This basic grasp of the gospel is mostly focused on our present situation with some view to the future and it is also mostly focused on us. There is nothing wrong with this, after all, these are our concerns in the infancy of faith. We hear the call of God, we repent and believe in Jesus, we are justified, sanctified, and look forward (vaguely) to being glorified – not that we would use this language ourselves. All this is cause for endless rejoicing in itself!

But what happens as we dig a little further? If the veins grow thicker the deeper we dive then we will find ourselves with greater joys and greater blessings. I think we discover a few more articles of interest which we must assimilate with all we’ve already learnt. Underneath the surface layer, we discover that yes, everyone is called to believe in the gospel (universal calling performed by Christians through evangelism) and yet not all believe. It takes God to call individuals to himself (known as effectual calling). Closely associated with this is the doctrine of regeneration. As we think about how we journeyed along this path we think about the person who told us the gospel and then immediately think about the part where we repented and believed. But in between these two steps is the incredible work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. At first we never saw this. But we might have wondered why it is that some people believe the gospel and others do not. Well, we must know that it is the Lord who effectually calls and his call is effectual because it brings dead people to life spiritually (regeneration).

Shortly after, we learn that we are now included in the family of God (adoption). The gravity of the doctrine of adoption takes quite some time to grasp (in my own experience). Likewise, the implications of the doctrine take some time to seep into our consciousness. Oppositely, consider justification. We are regularly reminded of our justification (I hope) due to the fact that we sadly fail to live a holy life. For every moment of failure, the gospel reminds us that in fact we are already declared righteous in Christ. As for the heights of adoption, seldom might we consider this despite the fact that it likewise affects the way we carry ourselves throughout life. Just like justification, adoption is a legal declaration. On the one hand, justification takes us out of the shackles of death. But adoption brings us into the family of God. One takes us out of the depths of despair while the other takes us to the heights of joy. So it is that a Christian’s identity is not only ‘innocent and free’, but greater still, ‘child of God’. If you feel the warmth of the love of God in your justification, how much greater ought you to feel the fires of the love of God in the way he has brought you into his adopted family. Having dug a bit further to see what is happening in our redemption, we are reaping great rewards of joy.

This leads me to another thought somewhat linked. God has a particular love for his children. God loves the world and all in it (in one sense of the word, ‘love’). But God particularly loves those whom he saves. I think we come to appreciate this much later in our Christian journey. Everything that we’ve considered so far (effectual calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, justified, adopted, sanctified) we experience in time, particularly our lifetime. But what about in eternity past? Well, in eternity past God has shown you particularly a kind of love that only a Christian gets to experience. Before time you were chosen and predestined to salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. This all too easily grates us, but stop and consider, it’s this kind of distinction that we enjoy in the doctrine of adoption. So just as we experience a special kind of love from our adoption as children of God born by the Spirit of God, so too before that distinguishing love came God’s loving predestination of your salvation. And now our focus has very much left ourselves, I hope. For what at all do we see ourselves doing in the act of God’s predestination and choosing before time? We are simply looking back and enjoying the grandeur of God’s work on our behalf.

As I recently re-read John Murry’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied, the great intricacies of God’s work in saving us struck me: the scope of his love reaches through time, condescends through all the levels of humility and is more certain than any reality we might consider. It is a beautiful work the Lord has done, and a wonder to behold in all its detail and grandeur.

Taking Hold – Reflecting on Ellie

Recently my wife and I remembered the death of our daughter as it was the anniversary of the day she died (28.07.20). As with such important times, we tread carefully. It is a time of remembrance, of reflection, of joy at life, and morning of death. Also, as it was the first anniversary – the establishing of family tradition.

The Lord ushers us through times of trial and discipline. It is unavoidable. It is certainly unpleasant. But under the sovereignty of God it is not without purpose, care and hopefully – on our part – thankfulness.

Let me share a reflection as I consider the tragedy of our daughter’s death.

It is a reflection on the words of our former principal Mark Thompson from Moore Theological College. He wrote to us during that time and said, “Take hold of the God you know and who has hold of you both.”

The Christian life is a life of faith. What exactly does faith entail though? First of all you must know the object in which you place your faith. There is an intellectual aspect to this faith (an important aspect which is sometimes misunderstood or forgotten, or misused even).

The object of Christian faith is the Lord Jesus Christ. What must you know about this person? Well, we must know that he is our Lord and our saviour. We must know that he died in our place and we must know it is out of love that he did so.

We might call this the propositional knowledge of our faith. These are propositions that we believe. Facts we assent to.

But to know these facts is not enough. Indeed to merely know them is insulting. For it is only fitting that possessing such knowledge we would then trust in the person of Christ. And this is what I want us to focus on today – the ‘who’ that we take hold of.

Our faith is in the person of Christ (or more broadly speaking, in God). The act of personally trusting in God is what must follow.

And so as we learn about God, we learn that he is good, just, righteous, holy, gracious, loving et cetera… We must not only be learning propositions, but we must be growing in a personal knowledge leading to the relational act of trusting in that person. Is this not the essence of the Christian faith, to know the person of God and not merely to know about God?

Yes it is.

During times of suffering we will come undone if we have not grasped this distinction. If our understanding of God is knowing things about the great “it” rather than knowing “Him”.

In times of suffering should you grasp after ideas then you will find no substance in your hands to hold onto.

But instead, if you “Take hold of the God you know…” then you will find yourself holding on to a person.

And the great thing about this person is that he will be holding on to you.

This you can trust.

Remembering Ellie

This week my husband and I remember the birth, life and passing of our first child and daughter, Ellie.

It’s strange to think that it’s been a year. Recently my husband reminded me of something that Mark Thompson, the principal of our theological college wrote to us at the time: “Take hold of the God you know and who has hold of you both.”

I know that God is good, wise and faithful. And it has been humblingly comforting to watch him shower us with his love and kindness, through his people, in the months and year since Ellie left us. I am grateful. 

But despite this, I know that God is good, wise and faithful because of his son, Jesus. His love is shown in action in history – through Jesus’s life, and ultimately at the cross. And this is a statement of love that is definitive: it is how I know God loves me. His goodness towards me, his wisdom and his faithfulness are all shown there. 

I know from my own life how he has been faithful – holding on to me through various ups and downs. We may say ‘God is good’ when we feel his material and circumstantial blessings, and it is true that all things – including the beautiful goods we enjoy – come from him. But if we limit our understanding of God’s goodness to just the material goods we enjoy, then we will be unprepared to perceive his persisting goodness when times of testing and calamity strike. And I know that in his wisdom, our God sends times of hardship to discipline and refine his people – because he is a father who loves us.

And Ellie has been a blessing. 

Because of Ellie, I understood grief first hand, and how to better support others in such times.

Because of Ellie, my husband and I could connect with other couples who had suffered various griefs of their own – especially the lack of children. 

Because of Ellie, we were made vulnerable, and were blessed by our brothers and sisters in Christ who then had the opportunity to practically care for us – and through whom, we were reminded of God’s love.

And there is so much more.

So I am thankful for the gift of our daughter Ellie. 

And this year, the first anniversary, we have started to form our own family traditions to remember her with. Everyone grieves in different ways, but there is something joyful to having a fry up in honour of a loved one, and I look forward to future children enjoying this and remembering her through it too.

Media consumption: Practical tips for moderation.

Last week we considered our attitude to media. You cannot take the right actions without first having the right attitude. Laws and rules don’t help without a renewed heart and mind. So implement change in your mind before you implement change with your hands. One follows the other but what you do follows very closely on what you think. First, have the right attitude toward media and the garden of the mind.

But what about some practical tips for media consumption. Well let me share with you what I do to help me manage what I watch and therefore manage what I think about.

Firstly, I limit the time I spend watching video streaming services, and of the given video streaming services I only have Netflix. That’s to say, there is only a limited amount of media I can watch because I only subscribe to one service and what it offers. I don’t want to endlessly watch shows. I want to read and write, and spend time in community. I want to game, and exercise and do a range of other things. So I limit myself to one service and its limited content. And even then, I don’t use it a lot. I basically never use it alone, but always watch shows with friends and mostly with my wife. In one sense this is because I don’t want to eat my whole birthday cake on my birthday. I want to enjoy the cake for the next week or two. I want to pace myself and get the most out of it. So I only have Netflix and even then I manage the time I spend watching it.

Secondly, and most importantly, I pre-emptively screen every TV show/movie that I watch on IMDb’s parents’ guide. I have a list of shows and movies and they only make the list if I’ve screened them beforehand for any sexual contact (particularly). I’ve been practising this meticulous process for some time now and it’s basically become second nature to me. I don’t at all trust the tags or content ratings provided by the shows themselves. They are too general. Nudity might be forensic nudity and not sexualised nudity. Sexual references might not be sex scenes, but they can be so vivid and perverse regardless, very little is left to the imagination. Some shows say they only contain strong violence. But as I look at the IMDb parents’ guide, so much sexual content passes through the radar seemingly undetected. The IMDb parents’ guide also has different levels; mild, moderate, severe. If anything makes it into the severe category, it is immediately out. I’m not going to watch it. Even if it’s just one scene in one episode, the whole series doesn’t make the cut. If it says it’s moderate, it’s not going to make the cut. These scenes are often, “implied sex.” Contributors might say, “you can only hear them but you can’t see them”, “it’s happening in the background but it’s out of focus”, “they start undressing each other but the scene only lasts for a minute until it cuts away”. It doesn’t make the cut. The director knows exactly where your mind is going and what its thinking. If the IMDb parents’ guide says the content is “mild”, then I have to read it carefully. Because these are just ordinary people who are filling out the parents’ guide. They have very interesting ideas and very different standards at times to myself. What is “mild”? I like to watch a lot of anime, so “mild” might be, “every female character has large breasts and tight clothing”, “some characters grab females breasts, but it’s only for comical effect”, “a shot of a fully nude lady from behind, but you don’t see any breasts.” This sort of stuff is not going to make the cut, but it is still considered “mild” by many. So I would be reading it carefully. Other times I can put up with “mild” content such as, “two people kissing”, “two people kissing passionately”, “crude sexual humour”, “scene with a naked woman’s silhouette in the shower, although nothing explicit is seen”. I have to make a wisdom call on these things. And I have to consider the genre of the show or movie. Action movies tend to be more liberal with their sexual content, leaning towards the side of eye candy. Crime shows tend toward a tense atmosphere, so sexual content may not necessarily be sexualised content. These are the kinds of considerations that I want to be making before I watch any show or movie.

Finally, I am experimenting with Netflix and limiting the content it shows me to Australian ratings M+ and below. I am not sure how long this will last, as some MA+ content is rated as it is due to action violence more than anything else. Nevertheless, I am curious to see how this goes and it’s actually quite an effective way of limiting content of a sexual nature. But it’s still crazy to see what kind of sexualised material is only considered M+. (As a side comment, I’m particularly talking about sexual content obviously. You might apply what I am doing to violent content, or supernatural content etc. Generally speaking however, I think action is more permissible than sexual content. But that’s a whole other discussion.)

Perhaps that seems rather dramatic to you. But I, “Do [not want to] conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of [my] mind.” (Romans 12:2). I’ve set high standards for myself because God has set high standards for me. And I’m better for it; a clean and clear conscience, peace of mind, better relationships with people, and most pertinent to the topic, greater enjoyment of what I watch. Isn’t that the whole point? Only watch the best stuff. If you only watch the best stuff (the cleanest stuff, the most well thought out stuff, the most story rich, ingenious writing), then get this, you will be watching the best, more well thought out, story rich, ingenious shows and movies. Isn’t that what we want? The answer is not always an obvious “yes” given what people watch these days. Consumer culture churns out algorithmic violence and sex. And then consumers wonder why the fast-food gives them colon cancer, diabetes, constipation, and a range of other undesirable conditions. But for the person who moderates what they watch, eating only the best food for thought, will you not reap the benefits? Moderating your own content with particularity will pay dividends.

However, it does come with some drawbacks. Besides the obvious amount of work you have to put into considering what you will watch, there is the fact that you will miss out on some critically acclaimed and renowned shows and movies. There will be conversations that you are not able to engage with because you are ignorant – and that, intentionally so. In fact, I was looking for some crime-dramas/detective stories recently, and heaps of the highly ranked and recommended shows contained explicit nudity and sex. I’ll be missing out on some of the best crime fiction/detective shows there are. And if you adopt higher standards, then you will too. At first this will be annoying, and it will continue to be annoying (although less as time goes by). But consider it a badge of honour. You have a higher calling, you have high standards. Don’t put up with trash, throw it out. Better still, don’t bring it into the house in the first place.

“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” (Romans 8:5–6)

Related posts

A Summary – Competing Spectacles by T. Reinke – Part 1: The Age of The Spectacle
A Summary – Competing Spectacles by T. Reinke – Part 2: The Spectacle

Media consumption: Thoughts about our attitude to media.

Tell me if this is a familiar situation for you. You were watching a movie or a TV show which apparently everyone else has watched, thus necessitating your viewing of it for fear of contracting the dreaded FOMO disease. However, at the end of one or another episode or in a scene in said movie you see something you can’t un-see, or hear something you can’t un-hear. Perhaps it was a sex scene, a scene with nudity. Or a scene of particular violence and gore. Even “mature themes” in a show can take you into territory you wish you never trod, leaving you questioning “what kind of ‘mature’ person should think on these things?” Once these scenes find a place in the hippocampus it’s not leaving campus. It has moved in. It is messy and stinks. The smell of its unpleasant abode soon wafts throughout the mind. Vivid recollections come back to haunt and you can’t get rid of them. I have no doubt that you can recollect some of these scenes. Even as I asked the question, they come back to haunt you.

What do you do? You can’t remove those disturbing recollections from memory, a task that’s basically not possible. But there is a degree of peace found in prevention. It’s a battle for the mind in this media saturated world. We don’t enter neutral territory when we enter the kingdom of Netflix. So come prepared.

First, be prepared with the right attitude.

I want to keep my mind free and clean (as the word of God and my informed conscious dictates). The matters on which we set our minds on matters. It’s not as if life is consisted merely in what we do with our hands and feet, or what we say. It’s also very much a matter of what we watch and therefore at a very basic level what we think on. Think on that. How much are we thinking? Lots. We think about all sorts of things. But what dictates my thoughts? Again, lots. I feed my mind lots of food for thought. A portion comes from my Netflix subscription. Other portions from Gods word, or friends, podcasts, video games, books and time alone on a walk. I must be aware of this. The more I play a video game, the more I think about that video game. Is that what I want? Well I must ask myself. How much do I want to be preoccupied with that game? It seems so obvious to state, but you think about the things you watch. Yes it is obvious, but we are not always conscious or aware of this fact. Much like breathing. Rarely do we think about breathing, until a diesel train goes by, or until the dog farts. Once triggered I’m very aware of my breathing. I’m actively supressing it. But it’s not so obvious when you work on a diesel train, or work in a dog pound. So it is that modern graphic content is all too “normal”. What we might even say to ourselves is, “it’s just one scene, I’ll put up with it.” Let me ask, what are you willing to “put up with”? It’s a trick question. If you have to ‘put up with it’, doesn’t that already say something?  An attitude shift is needed. Inform your conscience, inform your mind with the word of God. Let it dictate your standards and apply those standards with wisdom. Consider this important passage from Romans 8.

“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.” (Romans 8:5–8)

You cannot take the right actions without first having the right attitude. Laws and rules don’t help without a renewed heart and mind. So implement change in your mind before you implement change with your hands. One follows the other, and what you do follows very closely on what you think. But first, have the right attitude toward media and the garden of the mind.

Next week we will consider some practical tips for managing media consumption and moderation.

Related posts:

A Summary – Competing Spectacles by T. Reinke – Part 1: The Age of The Spectacle
A Summary – Competing Spectacles by T. Reinke – Part 2: The Spectacle

Sleep and Holiness

Changes in life don’t always occur by addressing something directly. Change can happen by addressing auxiliary or associated areas. So your house is freezing cold, turn the heater on. The heater isn’t fixing the problem! How is this possible? We must first close the windows and doors!

Sleep is much like closing the front door and making sure the windows don’t let a draught in. Perhaps your life is a little frosty. You always seem to be sick. Energies on the lower end (not that you remember what the higher end looks like). You can’t remember what memory even is (something to do with making a computer work?). To address all these problems you are taking lots of vitamin C, drinking lots of coffee, and making sure you have a good catalogue system so you never forget things. This is like turning the heater on and leaving the doors open to the dark, cold world outside. That is, if you’re not getting enough sleep.

Now, we think that those matters above are rather important (health, energy, mood etc). Certainly they are important. But what if you put holiness in that category too? What if we were exerting ourselves to be holy people, godly and righteous people, as our Lord has called us to be, yet for some reason we keep stumbling into foul moods, we keep doubting God’s goodness in our sufferings, and we have no energy to go about his mission? We can’t just call it a matter of “personality,” saying to ourselves, “God must have just made me this way and there’s nothing I can do about it.” It might not simply be a “thorn in the flesh” inflicted upon you by God. What if it was a thorn in your mind inflicted upon you, by you? Specifically, your lack of sleep. Perhaps it is the case that your holiness is hindered by your sleeplessness. That’s cause for alertness.

Here is Geoff Robson quoting Don Carson, “…If you are among those who become nasty, cynical, or even full of doubt when you are missing your sleep, you are morally obligated to try to get the sleep you need. We are whole, complicated beings: our physical existence is tied to our spiritual well-being, to our mental outlook, to our relationships with others, including our relationship with God. Sometimes the godliest thing you can do in the universe is get a good night’s sleep – not pray all night, but sleep. I’m certainly not denying that there may be a place for praying all night; I’m merely insisting that in the normal course of things, spiritual discipline obligates you to get the sleep your body needs.” (p.74)

What a challenge! The moral obligation to sleep is tied to our embodied nature. Let this shape our perspective on sleep. It might be that we think sleep is a luxury in a busy world. This is task oriented thinking and erroneous. To live in the world is not just a matter of doing, but of being. The amount of work you do or the amount of experiences you accumulate will pale in comparison to the kind of person you are. You are to be a holy person. And if you struggle to be a holy person because of your lack of sleep, then this area of your life needs addressing. If your sleeplessness causes you to sin then ‘cut off’ your sleeplessness.

Robson questions us, saying, “Are doubts more likely to creep in when you’re overworking? Then get more sleep. Do you get angrier and more irritable when you’ve had too many late nights? Then get more sleep. Do you find it harder to be patient with others when you’re tired? Then get more sleep. Does life just seem harder and more overwhelming when you’ve been burning the candle at both ends? Then get more sleep.” (p.76)

Chances are that if you’re convicted by these challenges, you already know that you need more sleep. It’s not that you need better education about sleep (although that never hurts). Simply having more information isn’t going to change your life nor your sleeping patterns. It’s more likely a matter of wisdom and willpower to act accordingly. Sleeplessness might not merely be a thing to see your doctor about. Perhaps it’s something that you need Christian accountability for, and Christian support in. Because it’s not merely a matter of bodily health. In a very serious way, it could be a matter of holiness.

Perhaps it’s fitting to end with a prayer from the Valley of Vision titled, ‘Sleep’.

Blessed Creator,

Thou hast promised thy beloved sleep; Give me restoring rest needful for tomorrow’s toil; If dreams be mine, let them not be tinged with evil. Let thy Spirit make my time of repose a blessed temple of his holy presence.

May my frequent lying down make me familiar with death, the bed I approach remind me of the grave, the eyes I now close picture to me their final closing. Keep me always ready, waiting for admittance to thy presence. Weaken my attachment to earthly things. May I hold life loosely in my hand, knowing that I receive it on condition of its surrender; As pain and suffering betoken transitory health, may I not shrink from a death that introduces me to the freshness of eternal youth. I retire this night in full assurance of one day awaking with thee. All glory for this precious hope, for the gospel of grace, for thine unspeakable gift of Jesus, for the fellowship of the Trinity. Withhold not thy mercies in the night season; thy hand never wearies, thy power needs no repose, thine eye never sleeps.

Help me when I helpless lie, when my conscience accuses me of sin, when my mind is harassed by foreboding thoughts, when my eyes are held awake by personal anxieties.

Show thyself to me as the God of all grace, love and power; thou hast a balm for every wound, a solace for all anguish, a remedy for every pain, a peace for all disquietude. Permit me to commit myself to thee awake or asleep.

Robson, Geoff. Thank God for Bedtime: What God Says about Our Sleep and Why It Matters More than You Think, 2019.

Bennett, Arthur. The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2002. p.298-299

Sleep – Creatureliness and Dependence

A little slumber, a little folding of the hands. Yes, hello darkness my old friend. Sleep is a friend. For some it is a friend who visits regularly. For others, not as regularly as we’d like, and for others, we kick them out of the house too early to our own peril.

In much the same way that we need friends, we need sleep. Except sleep is more immediately necessary. You will die sooner for lack of sleep than for lack of friends. But just getting the “bear essential” to function is also not good enough. Much the same as seeing our friends only the minimum required amount will not benefit the relationship. No, it will strain it. So it is that we need sleep, and we need good sleep.

What a thought – that we are intentionally made to sleep. God has made us this way. He made us so that we would be incapacitated for 7 ½ to 8 hours a day (yes that’s the standard for 98% of people, and no, you’re probably not one of the 2%. In fact there is only a 2% chance that you are!)

Why has God made us this way? We cannot answer that entirely. But we can say it highlights a significant difference between us and our Creator. As Geoff Robson points out, “There are many [differences between us and God], of course: the Lord God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, perfectly holy, and perfectly loving, to name just a few of his attributes. But how about this one: God never sleeps.” (p.15) So it is that our creatureliness is displayed in the very fact that we repeatedly must sleep yet God our Creator never sleeps. Now take a moment to consider how every night we are being reminded by the very nature of our necessitated rest that God never sleeps. Rather, He is tireless. No doubt, this rarely (if ever) crosses our minds as we place our brain capsules to the pillow and enter into the palatial darkness.

Because God’s sleeplessness is never much pondered by us, we can take this for granted. God has often used the most mundane aspects of our lives to speak into our lives. In much the same way that God uses food, friendships, work, or leisure to teach us, God uses sleep to teach us.

God uses our daily need for sleep, to teach us about himself. He needs no sleep because He never tires and His power never wanes. Which is good news for us. Robson puts it this way, “God never disregards his people – not for a second – and our ways are never hidden from him. Why? Because he simply never gets tired. He never sleeps. We may say we agree with this and understand this, but do we? When every task we set ourselves, every fibre of our being, is in some way tainted by our propensity to get worn out, how can we understand someone who literally never gets weary?” (p.18) Our earthly existence is woven with weariness. In the same way that we cannot fully grasp God’s sovereignty due to our limited sovereignty, we cannot fully grasp at his tirelessness due to our tiresome frame. But what we can know is that God is not like us. God uses this contrast, between him as creator and us as creation, to further show us what he is like. This ought to lead us into greater praise of him, and a greater trust in him and his power.

God also uses the difference between ourselves as creation and himself as creator to teach us about dependence. I think this is one of the greatest things about sleep, one of the best lessons it holds for us. We are dependent. In our lack of power to affect that which we want to with efficiency, we must be reminded that God is at work and he always accomplishes that which he purposes without ever diminishing his efficiency or effectiveness. This never changes for God. But how different the story is for us. I plan to do 10 things on my to-do list. I end up doing one. And it’s generally a patchy job. How will I ever get the other nine tasks done? Work myself down to the bone? Here’s what Robson says, “Most of us know the difference, right? We know the difference between an occasional late night or early morning because something important is on our plate or something urgent came up, and ignoring God’s sovereign care and thinking the world (or our little corner of it) depends mostly on us. It’s living the difference that’s hard. Because God’s work is decisive and ours is not, it is folly and vanity for us to stay awake longer than we should. All the extra effort in the world isn’t going to push our project over the line of success unless God blesses our efforts and enables our work to succeed (whatever ‘succeed’ might mean in each situation). But it’s hard to accept our limitations and leave things in God’s hands. Yet as hard as it is – and I may really be stretching the friendship to say it this way – staying up late may be worse than folly: it may be sinful. It may be a sinful attempt to wrest back the control that should gladly be relinquished into God’s hands, a sinful denial of our God-given human limitations, and a sinful failure to trust God.” (p.35) Robson’s words ought to be an insightful challenge to us. People aren’t going to be able to look from the outside and tell you the thoughts and intentions of your heart. And we ourselves can find it difficult to unravel our own motivations. But take Robson’s thoughts as an opportunity to pray through the attitudes you have regarding work (whatever that might be). Do you approach life knowing your own limitations, and resting in God to bless your efforts? Or not? Does the world rest on your shoulders?

Consider Psalm 127:1-2, “Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat— for he grants sleep to those he loves.” (Psalm 127:1–2 NIV)

Robson, Geoff. Thank God for Bedtime: What God Says about Our Sleep and Why It Matters More than You Think, 2019.