The Pilgrim Road

The other day I had a test-drive in a lazy-boy chair; the soft leather aroma filled the air as my bones sunk into the sumptuous foam. It raises your legs as it reclines, and has an array of remote controls:-like Captain Kirk’s chair on the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise. Unfortunately for the salesman, I suddenly remembered Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men fighting for survival in the Antarctic ice floes a century ago and called to mind a Japanese saying that “luxury is a menace to authentic manhood”.

The current generation of men seem bent on making life soft, convenient, safe and comfortable. Philosophies akin to the American dream point to an earthly paradise and rest after labour with the unspoken suggestion that a cure for sickness, old age and death can’t be far away now. Life’s meaning has become focussed on success, wealth and ease and the avoidance of all woes and challenges. Any obstacle or adversity or departure from the carefully crafted comfort zone is met with horror and ultimately disappointment. 

As a pilgrim people passing through life on the journey to our ultimate goal and destination, we have the opportunity to achieve a different kind of success. I read an insight that changed my thinking about my own trials and sufferings; that the difficulties we encounter are really a way that God initiates us into an authentic Christian manhood. He wants to see us reach our full stature as men and as sons and so will put us through whatever is necessary to achieve that. Even those things which happen to us, which can only be regarded as evil, can be transformed by grace (and time) and become our glory; “We know that all things work for good for those who love God”(Rom 8:28) We can resist this process or embrace it; but it will be lighter if difficulties are accepted as if from God’s hand because then we can prayerfully work through them in partnership.

Viewed from this perspective, and looking back on my own life, from childhood to the present, I can see how my heavenly Father led me through different challenges, trials and adventures; many I rather enjoyed, others are filed under ‘hideous abominations’ but in either case I grew through them, learned and relearned lessons, was hurt and healed and taken together it’s the hardships that form our characters the most. In time they are remembered fondly because of the fruit they bore and ultimately this toil is part of heaven’s price, and as we endure to the end our thrones await us!

Character was the first casualty

A German, Jewish scientist who escaped to England during the war was amazed that Nazism could possibly have taken hold of his country. The pre-war years being a great era of advancement, education and learning. The university engineering graduates, were brilliant in innovation and understanding but whilst they could design and build death camps, and calculate the logistics of the final solution, they all lacked the character to know that it was wrong or to do anything about it.

There are of course many more modern examples of the worsening blindness of man as he becomes cleverer; abortion, cloning, weapons that can obliterate the earth.

The potential for good that learning and advancement bring is never fully realised; always offset by the opposite loss of integrity and greed that seems to accompany it. I think the key to much of this is the shift that occurred in our point of reference when it comes to our ‘way’ of life. 

 

The beginning of civilisation in Western Europe is usually credited to the efforts of Charlemagne, a visionary Emperor, who started to import learned men, usually monks, to spread knowledge in his empire, and through his Knights code brought order and a more benevolent society, a sharp contrast with the barbarism that had dominated for centuries. 

At the heart of this was Christianity, the faith, a new way of life and it was the focal point of all learning and conduct. It was within that framework that learning and discovery moved forward, guided by its teaching and values; held by grace.

Nowadays in the West, those values are disregarded as is the faith that brought them, the focal point now is man, no longer guided by an informed conscience but by his own fallen nature only, with only the shifting sands of opinion to guide decisions. So with every step of progress, things get worse. There is no real character in man without the presence of God’s grace operating in the soul.

This loss of faith, values and character may not be recoverable any more, perhaps western society will simply disintegrate now as did all the old empires , Egyptians, Greeks, Romans once they made an enemy of God. There is a time for everything, and an end to everything the old order giving way to the new. The Eurpoeans, once great evangelists to the world may have no further role to play and be merely a historical footnote in the future.