Let’s sketch an image of ’sub-Christian Bill.’  Bill has grown up in an understanding of Christianity that is (the kindest word for it) diminished.  He is truly joined to God through Christ, but has not heard the grandeur of God, the true freedom of Christ, the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.

He regularly reads the Bible, but has never related its parts to the grand narrative.  He has specific, unthoughtful ideas of what a believer does and doesn’t do.  His aesthetic is underdeveloped, falling squarely in that category of ‘evangelical kitsch.’  His theological conclusions, or better assumptions, are (irritatingly) reflections of the republican doctrine du jour.

Two more steps: First, round out Bill by noticing his simplistic ideas of who’s on the good team and who the evil others.  Second, multiply Bill by 20.

Now Ted.  Ted is glad to live in the church’s neighborhood, a nice guy, has to this point not taken God or His Word seriously.  Ted is your run-of-the-mill, unromanticized unbeliever.  Let’s multiply him by 20 too.

Enter young X. Cellant into Ted’s neighborhood as Bill’s new pastor.  Who will Pastor Cellant choose to save, Bill or Ted?

He’s tempted, for a few reasons, to save Bill.  For one, Ted is intimidating!  The other.  Secondly, Bill’s positions really are irritating.

But there’s more pulls to save Bill.  Pastor X is a Protestant, and the narrative of protest and reform he has inculcated for some time, especially in seminary.  If X isn’t traducing the establishment, isolating himself from the old ways, forging a new way forward, leading others to freedom, he just doesn’t feel right.  X vaguely holds the idea that disestablishment is tantamount to salvation.

Too X is new to the church, and eager to make a difference.  The quickest way to make a splash but w/o angering many is to subvert.  Hint at new, better readings of Scripture; caricature the Man of the old decaying Christianities; rally the disenchanted to…well, to you, X.  You in the name of the theologians en vogue.

“For so long churches have…but God’s word says…”  You could spend a lifetime forming these types of sentences, saving Bill and the multiplied Bills.  Settling into the wide groove of identifying your version of the Life vis-a-vis others.  Saving the unenlightened (Christians), the uptight, hedged-in (Christians), the thoughtlessly conservative (Christians).

This version of salvation is so wide-spread that a pastor will have to deliberately turn away from it.  But he should.  He should do the work of an evangelist, and go after Ted, and not aspire to the work of reformer.

Yes, Bill needs to be taught; and Pastor X Cellant should go about that.  But it is unhelpful for Bill to see his previous Christian experience debunked by his newly minted, intellectual, passionate pastor.  What does it profit him to be drawn into the paradigm: “All my Christian life I’ve been told ____________ but now I have the truth”?

Save the salvation rhetoric and mood – for the unsaved!  And reserve the Messianic posturing for the Messiah!

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

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I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. 11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. 12 What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” 13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

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If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

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I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.

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We are not sure of the exact problem.  One thing jumps out: He’s stuck with his own thoughts, and deeply regrets it.  He’s “listened to his heart” and seeks more trustworthy direction.

Notice that the psalmist isn’t just trying to get the verse of the day downloaded to him.  No, things are a little more desperate.  If he doesn’t get the divine counsel soon, he falls into the sleep of death.

There are enemies too.  And one of the incentives for God to consider and answer is to quiet these rowdies.  The assumption is that the psalmist’s enemies are God’s enemies too.  When they are on top, both God and the psalmist appear at a loss.

So “how long?”

I want to be careful here because I observe that we fall into the trap of heading right for the dramatic and secretly loving the tragic.  But if the Psalter is (among other things) a guidebook to the life of faith, we know that it’s very possible we’ll sometimes sense that God has forgotten us.

We can also allow that this sense of abandonment might settle down on us, over lengthy periods.  Then, as we study our situation, examine our life from every aspect, it will seem incredible that God has left us in such weakness and befuddlement.

We who have been chosen by God from before the foundation of the world?  We the commissioned with such important directives?  We who have listened in to God’s disclosures on the invisible world and the future and the ancient past?  We united to the Savior who has borne the judgment of sin, who has passed through the shades, and come up into resurrection life?  We His younger siblings?

All those claims taunt me now.  Who did I suppose I was?  Well I know now what I am: sorrowful, fading, beaten—shaken.

Full Disclosure: More than I like, I fall into these dark thoughts of abandonment; taking Winston Churchill’s lead I call them “the black dog.”  Then let me alone;  leave me and the dog to enter Dunkin Donuts: to eat Boston Cremes and repine!

Why can’t I get on track?  Where is the saving from sin?  “I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”  I’m not asking for pity, God!  I simply want You to protect and improve what You said You’ve purchased…well, me!  I’m looking, but You’re hiding from me.

Hand me another donut!  How long?

If God would just turn the lights on for just a second—that I could get a little perspective!  Then I would know that something is happening in the background…that I’m being prepped or at least something is being staged…that there’s a point—even if it’s not me.  Just give me a clue as to what should I pray for?

Well, there’s the frustration.  But the prayer ends a little cheerfully.  Compared with the rest of the psalm, a lot cheerfully.  How does this happen?

Well, in prayer.  Prayer often clarifies things.  Dear People: Just.  Get.  To.  Praying.

Here after venting before God, the lights turn on, albeit dimly.  As he gets off his knees a thousand questions remain.  But the psalmist himself is able to put his distress in perspective by remembering a couple of things:

1. In the past he knew that God had rescued him on the way to some enduring, good plan for him.  If he experiences that deliverance, and that plan, one way before, and another way now—let it be.  The fact is, he is being saved.

2. God had in the past been generous to him; what makes this searing moment more real or defining than those moments?  And wouldn’t it make sense to believe that those generous moments, those moments of prosperity, betokened the big picture, since God is a loyal Savior?

I will sing to the LORD.

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