Armistice Day--Remembering True Heroes

My friend John Hemminger with his P-47

“Pay attention!”

            Steve Kelley, sportswriter for the Seattle Times, recently recollected the advice his father used to give him when they sat together watching the Philadelphia Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium. “Pay attention,” his dad would say when Willie Mays came to bat. “You’re watching greatness. You don’t want to forget this.”

I remember sitting on “Tightwad Hill” with my uncle watching the farm club Tacoma Twins, cheering wildly as I peered through the binoculars. Next day after school, I’d grab my bat and try my best to imitate the swing of those heavy-hitter wannabes. For the record, no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t wired for baseball greatness. “You can’t put in what the Lord’s left out,” quipped the trainer in the classic film, Chariots of Fire. When I would come to bat at neighborhood games, on queue the outfield moved in, or just squatted down and waited until I finished flailing the air. Through all this, however, I have figured out something important: I pay attention to men I think are great, and I desperately try to be like them. And so do you. 

Kelley’s dad was right about one thing: you don’t want to forget greatness. We must sit up and “pay attention” to real greatness. But what makes someone worthy of this attention? What makes someone truly great, a worthy hero, someone you should never forget, someone you should hold in the highest regard, someone you should imitate?

All men honor heroes

“Any nation that does not honor its heroes,” said Abraham Lincoln, “will not long endure.” In an age when debunking heroes has become as American as apple pie and hot dogs, an age of flag-burning ingratitude, of pompous disdain for the past, an age that chants “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture’s got to go,” we should cringe at Lincoln’s prophetic words. Maybe we’ve come too close. Maybe we’re there already. Maybe we are a people that mock at real heroes and, in their place, are now bowing down before the real villains.

Nineteenth-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle wrote that “Hero-worship cannot cease till man himself ceases.” In the fifth century, Augustine referred to men as homo adorans, man made to adore, to worship, to venerate heroes. Thus, kings and generals are followed by their adoring armies even into the jaws of death. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” cried Shakespeare’s Henry V as he rallied his men before the battered walls of Harfleur, “or close the wall up with our English dead!”  In the 1^st century BC, Julius Caesar was so adored by his legions that they were prepared to cross the Rubicon and march in defiance against Rome and Pompey. Or the young Alexander the Great motivating thousands to fight and die so that he might spread Greek culture and language--and rule the world in the bargain.

The literature of Western Civilization is the fascinating saga of great achievement, an enduring celebration of heroes. Great poetry praises the deeds of heroes, real or imagined, from the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, to the bloody triumphs of Beowulf, to the dragon-slaying Red Cross Knight of Edmund Spenser’s epic allegory, to the 600 courageous men of Tennyson’s Light Brigade, even to the humble heroics of Tolkien’s mythical Frodo the Hobbit--it all fires the blood and fascinates the imagination.

One thing is overwhelmingly clear: You and I were made to adore heroes. We pay attention with all our being to great men.

Beware of false heroes

This ingrained tendency to adore heroes, however, poses particular challenges for young men growing up in a culture inundated by glitzy, muscle-bound icons of popular culture and the sports arena. Pop culture particularly plays on your love of heroes. It could not survive without it. The icons of entertainment demand your worship. They live and die for it. So it has always been.

Many historians argue that the history of the world is the history of men following heroes. It would be just as accurate to say that the history of the world is the history of young men blindly following the wrong heroes, following unworthy examples, whose vices are tragically compounded in their fawning worshipers.

So who are your heroes? In today’s reading, Paul urges the Philippian Christians to “Join with others in following my example,” that is to say, follow the right men, set up heroes for yourself and be like them. Speak as they speak; do as they do. The Bible often speaks this way. Twenty-eight times we are told to imitate others, often to follow Christ the Captain of our salvation, but fully seventeen of those times we are commanded to follow others, like Paul, who have been transformed by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ and have been enabled by that same power to heroically follow Christ.

 Paul, here, is in earnest. This is no casual advice, take it or leave it. No. He reminds us, “I have often told you before and now say again even with tears.” Why with tears? Why so earnest? Because “many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.” Because an earthly hero has his “mind on earthly things.” And the young man who chooses to follow worldly heroes, to applaud at their entertainments, to listen to their music, to cheer at their achievement, to spend his money on their products, to paper the walls of his bedroom with their posters, that young man should not be surprised if he follows those heroes right into the jaws of hell. From this, you and I are duty bound to draw the line in the sand. This is no trivial matter. Don’t follow the enemies of the cross of Christ. “Their destiny,” Paul declares without equivocation, “is destruction.” And so will yours prove to be if you follow them.

Moreover, the more impressed you are by the status and achievement of unbelievers, by their sophisticated good looks, by their clothes, their shoes, by their posture, their swagger, by their prowess in sports, by their associations, their way of speaking, by their money and fancy cars, lavish houses, planes, and yachts, the more you are moved by these things the less you will be able to separate out their vices. Soon they won’t seem like vices at all. At the last their vices will be yours. Know that their end will be yours as well. Fully expect to become like those you adore.  

“We are all creatures of imitation,” wrote nineteenth-century Anglican bishop J. C. Ryle. “Precept may teach us, but it is example that draws us.” And since those examples can draw us from both directions, you must beware of the tendency to go easy on the parts of your sports or music heroes’ lives that you know are sinful.

Do you honestly think that you will be unaffected by the foul language, the unfaithful living, the hostility to truth, or the swaggering arrogance of your worldly heroes? I doubt it. And the more impressed you are with their achievement the more likely you are to embrace other elements of their lifestyle.

Don’t expect to see it coming like a tidal wave. It all happens gradually. Rarely does a young man, like yourself, who is growing up in a Christian home, rarely does he plunge headlong into sin with his back against all he has been taught. Generally, it happens little by little, one single, what’s-the-big-deal step at a time. “The road to hell,” observed C. S. Lewis, “is a gradual one.”

The best way to avoid the gradual road to hell, is to cultivate honor for and imitation of truly worthy heroes. Here’s one of mine.

Fight to the death

            I’ve thought a good deal lately about one of my heroes. P-47 World War II fighter pilot, John Hemminger lived with his wife and three children on American Lake, a five-minute bicycle ride from my childhood home. I was the neighbor kid who always hung around in the summer, fishing, swimming, and doing wood-working projects in the basement. Along with the stray dogs that attached themselves to kind-hearted Mr. Hemminger, I too adopted the Hemminger family as my own.

My mother’s rule was that I couldn’t go swimming unless the thermometer read seventy degrees. I soon figured out how to nudge it up with the hair dryer, and then I’d hop on my bike and off to the Hemmingers. I always tried to time things so I could sit down for the usual lunch fare of grilled cheese sandwiches, soup, Gravenstien apple sauce, dilly beans, and smoked salmon. Nobody did homemade applesauce like Edna Hemminger, and nobody did salmon like John Hemminger.

John Hemminger was a man of deeds and not words, and so I rarely heard him speak about the war, and never about his role in it. I was forced to piece things together from pictures and from stories others told about his role in that great conflict.

“The greatest catastrophe in history,” Stephen Ambrose called World War II and “the most costly war of all time.” In April, 1945, 300,000 Americans attacked the Japanese island of Okinawa, while the US Navy was pounded by 350 kamikaze planes. We lost thirty-six ships. In human life, the casualties were beyond staggering: 49,200 men in one battle. The Japanese lost 112,129 human lives at Okinawa. Still they fought on.

Germany surrendered in May, but by summer, it appeared that Japan would fight on until there was not a Japanese soldier who remained alive. A full-scale Allied invasion of Japan seemed the only option, but it was an invasion that would have cost 1,000,000 American soldiers their lives. President Truman opted to drop two atomic bombs on Japan in hopes of breaking the enemy’s will to fight to extermination. It was as if the entire nation had become kamikaze flyers.

           

Fighter pilot greatness

In 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America joined the war, and can-do men like John Hemminger were desperately needed to fight. He said goodbye to his childhood sweetheart, Edna Mae Firch, and joined up.

The picture I will always have in my mind of him is of a quiet young man in a leather bomber jacket, a shy, boyish grin stretching across his handsome features, posing with his beloved P-47, affectionately dubbed Edna Mae. Though called on to do highly dangerous and daring feats, there was no hint of the cocky, swaggering dog fighter in his looks or carriage.

John Hemminger loved machines. I can only begin to imagine his fascination at first sight of his P-47’s Pratt and Whitney, eighteen cylinder, 2,800 horsepower engine, or the heart-pounding thrill when he first accelerated into the heavens at his plane’s maximum speed of 433 mph.

He was a gentle, peace-loving man, so I particularly wonder what his first thoughts were when he laid eyes on the eight 12.7mm Browning machine guns bristling from the wings of his P-47, a machine engineered for killing. One thing I’m sure of: there was no better cared for fighter plane than his, and likely none more skillfully used for its designed purpose.

John Hemminger was credited with the last P-47 kill of the war. By some accounts, he and the Japanese pilot were slugging it out somewhere over the blue waters of the Pacific, September 2, 1945, while American top brass accepted the Japanese unconditional surrender on board the USS Missouri. The facts are unclear, because John Hemminger rarely spoke about the war, and boasting was something he never did.

What is clear is that John Hemminger, along with a generation of Americans, was a humble servant hero who did his duty, and then, unlike many with whom he fought, he returned home. Bidding farewell to his P-47 Edna Mae, he married his beloved Edna Mae, raised his family, and lived a long, seemingly insignificant, life. John Hemminger and his dear wife were not bombastic about their faith in Christ, but few people have more consistently lived out the Lord’s injunction to love their neighbor as themselves. Consequently, their home was a quiet, contented one, filled with stability and service.

In the world’s eyes, after the war John Hemminger lived an ordinary life, some might have called it boring. But not so to the dozens of missionaries he supported and took fishing when they were home, and whose decrepit cars he repaired, rebuilt, or replaced, often at his own expense. And all done hush-hush, so no one would give him credit for his latest acts of generosity.

True greatness

Jesus told his disciples, if they wanted to be great, to become servants. He didn’t say to become great baseball players, or inventors, or CEOs, or powerful politicians, or celebrity pastors, or best-selling authors—or even fighter pilots. “Whoever wants to become great,” Jesus said, “must be your servant” (Matthew 20:26). If you want to be great you too, must be a servant. John and Edna Hemminger were great Christians, because they were transformed into great servants by the ultimate Servant of servants, Jesus Christ.

My hero John Hemminger died of Parkinson’s Disease, December 27, 2006. His wife Edna Mae suffered for decades with Multiple Sclerosis before her home going. But I never heard either of them complain. They bore their trials with patience—even with smiles. Nor did I ever hear either of them speak critical words about others. I think they were simply too busy, in Christ’s name and by his grace, loving and serving their neighbors. Pay attention, young man. This is true greatness.

You probably don’t need to travel to faraway places to get to know and honor servant heroes. I suspect that in your church, neighborhood, and extended family there are several John and Edna Mae Hemmingers. Folks like them help unmask the masquerade of what passes for greatness among modern celebrities. Pop icons and all their vain-glorious glitter look pretty irrelevant next to great people like these--but only if you train your eye and your affections to know and honor genuine greatness.

Glitz or glory

Let’s face it. It’s far easier to talk about being impressed with servant greatness than it is to actually be so. I wonder if the normalization of sin is not the reason. “Worldliness is what makes sin look normal,” wrote David Wells, “and righteousness look odd.” Hence, venerating worldly heroes sets us up to begin feeling that humble, holy living is pretty out of touch, not much fun, certainly not cool.

Here again, you must pay attention. When you honor heroes who live worldly lives, you should expect to gradually become more impressed with their worldliness. Meanwhile, your worldly hero’s lifestyle will increasingly seem to be the normal way of things. And since no one wants to be odd, everyone wants to think of himself as a normal guy, so gradually you will wink at their vices, embrace their values, and imitate their ways. Finally, Paul’s point in Philippians 3:17-21 is that if you do this, when the dust settles, you will share in their destruction.

Puritan Jeremy Taylor described the incremental decline that a young man should expect to pass through if he forges friendships with worldly heroes and their sin. “First it startles him, then it becomes pleasing, then easy, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed, then the man is impenitent, then obstinate, then resolves never to repent, and finally he is damned.”

On the Judgment Day, all that worldly glitz, all that superficially impressive lifestyle will be unmasked. And if you have been duped by a false hero, by one whose “mind is on earthly things,” it will be far too late to halt the cycle of decline. You must do it now.

Join with others in following the example of great Christians—like John and Edna Mae Hemminger. The Bible is full of them, and so is church history. Pay attention to them.

Throw in your lot with the truly greats. Know your citizenship. Paul says it is “in heaven.” Know that most of the world’s heroes are frauds. Their power, their prestige, their wealth, is all borrowed and will someday be swept away with them. “Their destiny is destruction.” No real man would throw in his lot with losers like that.

You, young man of God, were predestined for a glorious body, transformed by the infinite power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Make him your ultimate hero, honor those who honor him, and resolve that he will have no worldly rival.

(Excerpt from STAND FAST In the Way of  Truth)

Learn more about my 20th Century books, War in the Wasteland (WWI) and The Resistance (WWII), both a significant CS Lewis historical connections--bondbooks.net  

Spiritual Cancer, Gunpowder, and Fleabites: The Anatomy of a Fall

"His pride led to his downfall."

The Way to Fall: II Chronicles 26:5, 16 (excerpt from STAND FAST, by Douglas Bond)                                                                         

Uzziah’s downfall

            “As long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success,” the inspired historian records of young Uzziah. And was he ever successful! A warrior king almost on a par with King David, he defeated the mighty Philistines and demolished the walls of their principle cities, and waged successful campaigns against the Arabs and the Ammonites. No other king could boast of so disciplined an army and of such deadly war machines--catapults and mechanized equipment for firing arrows. For his army and weaponry, even for advances in farming, Uzziah was the envy of ancient kings.

But something was not right: “As long as he sought the Lord…” With those words, the chronicler hints that Uzziah is not going to stay the mark. This young king had humbly sought help from the Lord and “was greatly helped.” But here’s the rub, “after he became powerful his pride led to his downfall” (II Chronicles 26:15b, 16a).

So it will be with you if you do not persevere in seeking after God. On the heels of urging you to seek the Lord early, I wonder if some young men jump to the conclusion that seeking the Lord is a youthful activity, that if you do enough of it in your youth you can live off the interest in your adult life. No way. Seeking the Lord is a continuum. It is daily rising up and calling him blessed. It is hourly vigilance over besetting sin. It is daily diligence in the Word and prayer. It is humble worship, seeking the Lord in his house on the Sabbath day. Genuine seeking is always in the present perfect tense--continuing, pressing on, straining every spiritual muscle after Christ—all things Uzziah stopped doing.

Continue doing these things and you will have success. God does not make idle promises. You will succeed in mortifying sin, in effectual prayer, in heartfelt worship, in humble service, and at the last you will have the celestial success of Satan conquered and heaven won. Forget riches and fame—there’s no greater success.     

            But many men—young and old—are brought low, like Uzziah, because when they gain a measure of success they become proud; they fail to give God credit for his gracious work in them, his gifts given to them, his successes. 

Sports and pride

Moments before the 500 meter US Sprint Kayak Nationals final I asked one of my sons what his race strategy was. “I win, they lose,” he said with a grin. He’s a big Ronald Reagan fan and likes quoting Reagan’s Cold War strategy. Two days earlier he’d lost the 1000 meter sprint to a Hungarian-born paddler by 4,800ths of a second and was absolutely determined not to cut things so close. He did win the 500 and by a bigger margin. And then the monster pride rears his ugly head.

Competitive sports, young men, and pride are a union forged in hell. If you are an athlete—or the father of one--you must particularly beware of pride. Why? Because, as C. S. Lewis put it:

Pride is essentially competitive—is competitive by its very nature. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. It is Pride—the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and (still more) the wish for power. For, of course, power is what Pride really enjoys.

           

Most young men love competition. Men thrive on it. And we love power. We love being strong and being in control of people and situations. Many great things have been accomplished by powerful men straining to be the best. Consider General Bradley’s quip as George Paton led the 3^rd Army in victory after victory, ever deeper into German-held territory in WW II: “Give George another headline and he’ll be good for another thirty miles.” It’s embarrassing, but we’re inclined to do more if we’re getting lots of credit for doing it. Feed our pride and we’ll conquer the world.

Unlike war, where pride might motivate a young man to do great deeds that benefit others, in sports young men are easily consumed with shameless self-interest. Listen to the boasting of professional athletes. Watch the swagger of the varsity basketball jock. See the jutted chin and hauteur of the All-American quarterback. Gaze in disgust at the unabashed self-conceit of the running back as he struts and preens in the end-zone. Listen to your teammates. Hear your own words. Look into your own heart. If you are a competitive athlete, beware of pride. 

“If sports are supposed to build character,” wrote Brad Wolverton in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “recent evidence suggests that college athletics is falling down on the job.” He cites a study of the moral reasoning of 70,000 college students conducted over two decades. The result? “Athletes have significantly lower moral-reasoning skills than the general student population.” Moral reasoning—what the ancients called virtue--leads you to use your strength and skill in the interest of others. Competitive sports can flip things around. So impressed with your own athletic prowess, you sneer in disdain at others. Gradually, you begin to think of yourself as a worthy object of the most devout—and disgusting--self-worship.

Once on your knees before yourself, the absurdity of it all never occurs to you. How ridiculous for you to be puffed up over strengths and skills God ultimately gave you! But seeing your pride for what it is requires a changed heart.

Only a grateful heart will keep the nonsense of your pride in check. Just when you’re swelling up at your victory, offer thanksgiving that God gave you a healthy body, that he gave you the opportunity to develop your skill, and if you’re really good at it, the particular talent that sets your performance above the pack. Remind yourself that this is God’s doing.

Then brace yourself like a man. The devil slithers near. “Yes, but you’ve worked hard—harder than the rest,” he hisses in your ear. “You’re first on the water and last off every workout.” Stop your ears. The devil woos with “honest trifles.” Believe him and, as Shakespeare put it, he will “betray you in deepest consequence.”

Insanity from hell  

C. S. Lewis has little good to say about pride. “It comes direct from Hell,” he wrote. “Pride is spiritual cancer; it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.” He’s just getting warmed up. “The essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.” He argues that all other sins “are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

In one of the Bible’s classic passages on pride, the prophet Daniel records the history of how pride ate up the common sense of another great king of the ancient world. Nebuchadnezzar designed and built the magnificent hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the world. It was a splendid sight, and Nebuchadnezzar was intensely proud of it. Like Uzziah, Nebuchadnezzar grew so proud that he gave himself credit for the splendor of his entire empire. Seizing glory that belonged to God, and setting himself up as God, he personified pride, “the complete anti-God state of mind.” For this, Nebuchadnezzar became a madman, more like a wolf than a human.

For a just God, the punishment always fits the crime. No punishment could have been more fitting for this proud man. Pride dehumanizes a man. You are most human when you are closest to God, when you acknowledge his ways, when you bow before his sovereignty, when you say that God does what he pleases, that his kingdom is an eternal kingdom, when you say, “Heaven rules!” But pride makes you see things upside down and inside out. Pride, like insanity, grossly distorts reality. 

Nebuchadnezzar’s self-conceit made him believe the utter nonsense that he had made himself, his strength, his intellect, his very life. Believing the ridiculous notion that you have accomplished anything by your mighty power, for “the glory of [your] majesty” is nothing short of insanity.

Thus, God punished Nebuchadnezzar by letting the full impact of his pride come down on his head. Chained to a stump, eating grass like a beast, Nebuchadnezzar finally learned that “Those who walk in pride [God] is able to humble” (4:37). Finally, he learned that “Heaven rules” (4:26).

Nebuchadnezzar’s son Belshazzar, however, didn’t get this. Fathers train sons, alas, more persuasively by our vices than by our virtues. Son Belshazzar lost his entire kingdom to the Medes and the Persians--and his life--because “[he] set [him]self up against the Lord of heaven,” and because he “did not honor the God who holds in his hand [his] life and all [his] ways” (5:23).

Walk in pride and you lose your common sense. Persist in pride and you become a madman. Press on in pride and you end up where pride began: hell. God resists the proud. He gives grace to the humble. Walk in humility--or prepare to eat grass.

  

Know it all

 Anglican bishop J. C. Ryle called pride, “the oldest sin in the world. Satan and his angels fell by pride. Thus pride stocked hell with its first inhabitants.” Ryle warns that, next only to Satan and his angels, “Pride never reigns anywhere so powerfully as in the heart of a young man,” and it puts young men in particularly dangerous positions. “Pride makes us rest satisfied with ourselves, thinking we are good enough as we are.” And when you think you are good enough as you are you are in deep weeds. You fail to be teachable. Why bother learning when you’re smug and satisfied with yourself?

Lewis in the opening letter of Screwtape Letters gives demonic lesson one in tempting a young man into hell: “Best of all, give him the grand general idea that he knows it all.” This is an easy sell for him. It’s a strategy that has worked exceptionally well for the devil over the millenniums and it continues to work on your soul. But it’s a temptation entirely dependent on your pride. We love believing this lie.

Similarly, Ryle argues that pride “closes our ears against all advice.” How many times have you resented your father’s advice this week? You feel like you already know what’s best for you, so why listen to his advice. I remember this resentment at the words of my father. You’ve got to get over this, and Ryle offers particularly valuable advice to curb this foolish expression of your pride. Don’t close your ears to it.

Do not be too confident in your own judgment. Cease to be sure that you are always right, and others always wrong. Be distrustful of your own opinion when you find it contrary to that of older men than yourself, and especially to that of your own parents. Age gives experience and therefore deserves respect. Never be ashamed of being a learner. The wisest men would tell you they are always learners, and are humbled to find after all how little they really know.

I recently watched and listened to a twenty-two-year-old fool publicly dress down a man of fifty at a regatta where everyone was supposed to be having fun. It was shameful. But you would never do that. Not out loud, maybe. But how often have you responded to advice with internalized smart-mouthed, know-it-all comments? True, it’s better manners not to speak disrespectfully, but the pride is still there deeply rooted in your heart. Being a Christian man is about rooting it out.

Pride and gunpowder

“To be proud,” continued Ryle, “is to be more like the devil and fallen Adam, than like Christ.” But you’re called to be like Christ who was born in a barn, became friends with sinners and sick people, washed his disciples’ feet, was despised and rejected by the big shots of his day, finally submitting to the most ignominious suffering and death for our salvation. If anyone had a right to be proud, it was the second member of the eternal Godhead, but Christ was not proud.

Neither was his follower John Newton. When Newton took up his ministerial duties and moved into the Old Vicarage in Olney, in 1764, he rearranged his garret study. Instead of looking out on the lovely river valley and the fourteenth-century gothic church, he looked on the rows of tenement houses where the needy of his parish lived and worked. Soon the upper-crust in Olney resented Newton: He was too busy with the poor to attend them when they held court at their fine dinners and balls. They despised a minister who refused to fawn on them like Jane Austen’s ministerial caricature Mr. Collins, who made himself a laughingstock by constant gushing over his venerable patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourg.

In Newton’s day the ministry was a way to schmooze with the rich and famous, things Newton never did. But he knew many ministers who did and so gave this advice to a young pastor: “It is easy for me to advise you to be humble, but while human nature remains in its present state, there will be almost the same connection between popularity and pride, as between fire and gunpowder: they cannot meet without an explosion, at least not unless the gunpowder is kept very damp.”

How do you keep your pride damp? By having the same mind as Jesus. He came “not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” Be honest about your powers. Christ’s are infinite and original; yours are derived and pathetically finite. He is God; you are not. Yet, Christ was humble, and he calls you—who have no right to be proud—humbly to follow in his steps. And best of all, he enables you, by the grace and power of Jesus, to grow in the grace of humility.

Be little

Irrational as it is, many Christian young men swagger on in their pride. They speak condescendingly to parents and teachers. They are rude. They are so “wise in [their] own eyes” (Proverbs 26:12) that they strut as if they know it all.

But maybe you are bright, gifted, talented, strong, and highly capable. Compared with the rest of teenaged young man on the planet, most of you are highly privileged. Some of you believe it when your grandparents gush at how gifted you are. Maybe you are gifted. So how do you avoid pride?

            Listen to humble, gifted tinker John Bunyan in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners as he addresses the gifted young man’s sin. “Gifts being alone [are] dangerous because of the evils that attend those that have them—pride, desire for vainglory, self-conceit.” He warns that if a young man rests in his gifts and not in the grace of God he will “fall short of the grace of God.” A wise young man “has cause also to walk humbly with God and be little in his own eyes, and to remember that his gifts are not his own, but the church’s, and that by them he is made a servant to the church.” There’s that word again—servant.

Avoid pride by humbly using your gifts, great or small, to serve others in Christ’s name and by his grace. And for the rest of us who may not be so gifted, Bunyan memorably concludes that “Great grace and small gifts are better than great gifts and no grace.”

Talented, gifted as you are, you are not nearly as great as the devil wants you to believe. The devil loves pride because pride makes you an idol worshiper—with you as idol. He’ll do anything to keep you from worshiping the living God, giver of all gifts.

Swollen with pride at his success, Uzziah forgot all this. “His pride led to his downfall.” Not content merely to be king, Uzziah usurped the priestly role, was struck with leprosy, and “excluded from the temple of the Lord.” Young men, walk humbly with your God. Gratefully appreciate your gifts and the gifts of others as if they were gifts of God—which they are. Humbly “serve the Lord with gladness,” knowing your great daily, hourly, moment-by-moment need of the preserving grace of Christ who promises to complete the good work he has begun in your heart. Keep your eyes on his strength, not on yours.

Covenant High School Art Field Trip

May 6-8, 2009, Bond was a chaperon (and bus driver) on the Covenant High School Art Field Trip to Cannon Beach, Oregon. Setting off from Tacoma Wednesday morning, we found the weather to be particularly nasty, rain descending in torrents, and gusts pummeling the side of the bus. (at left, CHS students and the 99-year-old Pacific County Courthouse in Southbend, Washington)

Though theologically about as far from the Westminster Confession of Faith, the biblical standards informing CHS's raison d'etre, Seaside United Methodist Church for the third time generously and graciously hosted our students in their building only 2 or 3 blocks from the sand and surf of the Pacific Ocean. The evening ended in a blustery flurry of rainfall at the beach, then back to the church for devotions.

Thursday morning dawned much more promising. I had the responsibility of morning devotions on the tour and began with a reading from chapter 11 of arguably my favorite of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Horse and His Boy, by CS Lewis. It is the marvelous passage where Shasta has a conversation with Aslan, though he is at first clueless that it is Aslan with whom he is speaking. Shasta was sure that there were several lions, and that he'd had bad luck all around on his efforts at escaping Tashbaan and fleeing to Narnia. "There was only one lion," Aslan said, and then he explains the many and varied ways he guided and governed all of Shasta's steps thus far. After which Shasta in wonder inquired, "Who are you?" The lion replied, "Myself," three times over. "Shasta was no longer afraid... but a new and different sort of trembling came over him. Yet he felt glad too." When at last his eyes were open and he could see the great lion pacing at his side, he was sure that "no one had ever seen anything more terrible or beautiful." I then took the students to Isaiah 43:1-7 where Lewis may have gathered some of his biblical material for this episode. "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine... Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you..." One of my favorite passages on the sovereignty of God precisely and lovingly superintending each of the myriad of details that make up any one's life--that make up my life. He is the redeeming God who "bring[s] my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth."

That day was gorgeous, sunshine, blue skies, crisp sea breezes, with kite flying, beach biking--and the ultimate sand sculpture contest, teachers and chaperones participating. We brainstormed over dinner and lunch that day, planning out a bas relief of Sola Scriptura in sand. Not the most fitting medium for the subject matter, but then sand is sort of obligatory with sand sculpting, isn't it? Here's a picture of the end product. Judging was a bit dicey. We were dependent on the whims of passers-by, most of whom preferred our creation, but felt sorry for the students and voted only for the four student categories. Fair enough.

After skim-boarding, seagull baiting, and pizza and s'mores around a blazing beach fire (not to be confused with a Bond fire), we sang "Let all things now living a song of thanksgiving," and other favorite hymns accompanied by the ever-talented Ralph McLin on his mandolin.

Next morning I read from Psalm 27:1-4, God is our light, salvation, and stronghold, focusing in particularly on an art field trip on verse 4, the Psalmists longing to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life and to spend those days gazing on the beauty of the Lord and inquiring in his temple (see HOLD FAST, chapter 11, Death of Art). We will have far fewer questions about what is beautiful in art if we are spending our days gazing on the beauty of the Lord.

Thinking of Lewis, reminds me of other observations I've had about how much better theologian Lewis is when writing Narnia than some of his more overtly intentional apologetic works. This from STAND FAST, chapter 27:

We call or he calls?

Though C. S. Lewis was an extraordinary Christian apologist, there were some holes, shall we say, in his theology. One of these reoccurs in the form of philosophical arguments favoring freedom of the will over against divine sovereignty. Put simply, Lewis was probably more of an Arminian than he was a Calvinist.

Nevertheless, writers are sometimes at their best when writing poetry or imaginative fiction, so in the Narnia books Lewis wonderfully illustrates the sovereignty of grace and the effectual calling of God’s Spirit. In The Silver Chair when Aslan tells Jill that he called her out of her world, Jill disagrees. “Nobody called me and Scrubb, you know. It was we who asked to come here. Scrubb said we were to call… And we did, and then we found the door open.” Jill, like most, mistakenly thought her calling was what opened the door. Lewis’s Lion wisely replied, “You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you.”

Similarly, in The Magician’s Nephew, Lewis has Aslan utter “a long single note; not very loud, but full of power. Polly’s heart jumped in her body when she heard it. She felt sure that it was a call, and that anyone who heard that call would want to obey it and (what’s more) would be able to obey it, however many worlds and ages lay between.”

As it did Jill, the power of this call ought to fill us with the deepest wonder at the grace of our God, who alone elects, redeems, calls, and keeps all his sheep so that not one of them is lost...