The Shrewd Deceiver
BOREDOM
“What we call triviality is really the tag-ends of numberless tales; ordinary and unmeaning existence is like ten thousand detective stories mixed up with a spoon” (G.K. Chesterton).
It is part of the deceiver’s agenda to fill us with gloom, narrow our horizons and kill our capacity for joy. He wants us trudge through life with a sour disposition, cynical and crabby. He wants us to be old, like himself. G.K. Chesterton was sure that one of the central problems in life is that we have grown old and God has stayed young. We have lost our sense of wonder while God could maybe sit and happily examine an autumn leaf for a million years or so. We are not able to focus on any one thing for too long because we get bored so quickly and that happens because we cannot see the wonder in things. That is part of the reason fashions change so quickly. The dress that is chic today is tomorrow’s rag, yesterday’s hairstyle is today’s ancient history and the “star” on everyone’s lips this week might be old news a month from now. Flooded with wonders but lacking the capacity for wonder we grow weary and old.
But many of us have seen little children discover their toes. They will sit for weeks perhaps half a year with big round eyes, pulling at them and watching them wiggle. They have not only discovered a wonder, they possess the capacity for wonder. Chesterton insisted that God is like that and that He sees life through wondering eyes. It is Satan, the shrewd deceiver, who is dull and cultivates dullness. That is part of his agenda.
Paul (in Acts 17:24-25) says, “The God who made the world and everything in it…he himself gives all men life and everything else.” He gives all men life. And what is more, He gives them everything else. What should we say to that? Should we talk dismissively about the life God has given all of us? As Eben Holden said, “God must think purty middlin’ well of it if he gives it to everyone” so who are we to talk about it as though it were nothing?
Jesus made it clear there was more on offer. Here is what he says in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full.” The Master does not deny that God has already given life to all but He does insist that in Him we can have life “to the full”. Certainly that has a future aspect which we will mention in a moment but here and now Jesus Christ deepens our grasp and appreciation of life by deepening our capacity for wonder and joy even if in pain. Even now, with all the pain and loss around and the boredom available, to suffer from an endless case of the blahs means we are not in on the secret. Not long ago news headlines heralded that we needed multiplied millions of dollars poured into youth entertainment centers (space designated for teens”) because they were bored and were going off into anti-social behavior and crime. Satan does not create Frodos; he manufactures boredom. He does not inspire young people with a sense of cosmic adventure; he inspires policy-makers who have no sense of the “war of worlds”, thus they build more entertainment centers (and many churches follow suit).
Paul was certain that though his outer body was decaying and he was beaten from pillar to post by his enemies, all the while his inner man was gaining strength; was being renewed day by day. And Jesus told His troubled disciples (John 16:33), “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” There is a reality about the Christian life that we are missing if the only thing that can keep us bright and cheerful is jetting off to faraway places five times a year; dancing the night away with bright young things and pop, sniff or drink the latest muck with beautiful people. If Christ’s overcoming the world and ushering in a new creation has not made a difference regarding how we see things, it is because we have not yet grasped what He is about. The world is not the same since He has been here!
Yes, but isn’t there reason to be gloomy? Everywhere you look there they are – lonely-looking houses, derelict buildings, gardens overgrown and out of control, fallen bridges, dust bowl areas and malaria swamps. There they are, you can find them without looking; broken-backed cats hit by cars, weary old horses, frozen birds and stunted trees, twisted rock formations and deep jagged wounds in the earth’s crust hundreds of miles long; scorching winds, waterless miles and animal carcasses; creation groaning, looking, wishing, lamenting – hoping, hoping, hoping.
That is one of the chief mental difficulties of our tiny little head-worlds. There are times when it all seems so trivial and God is so big that our senses tell us He can’t be near or must be too different from what we perceive Him to be. But then we are tempted to think, “If He takes this whole thing seriously, how grand and majestic can He be? There’s nothing to this life.” Then, as if to shock us, we think of Him taking things like a lost sheep, a woman coming to a well on her own in the middle of the day (in the day’s heat), a kid who has run away from home, a farmer flinging seed all over the place, a dead sparrow lying in a ditch all alone or picking a hair off somebody’s collar and looking thoughtfully at it. When our ennui is getting the better of us, we realize we are growing old and God has stayed young. A couple of days later, when we gut it out, the mental-weather clears up and we get a glimpse of glory in the most mundane things.
It is no fun having a dose of the blahs, but then, at a level deeper than the intellectual, we begin to sense that it is the work of the prince of the power of the air who poisons the atmosphere. In every living thing, in every voiceless rock or pool or spring there is a groaning that only God can hear (but if we listen really hard with our hearts we can almost hear the distant echo of it). It is the whole creation groaning under the burden of “futility”. But if we strain very hard we can sense defiance in the echo, hopefulness too, that one day it will all change and into the heart, like the quiet tide that with soft gurgles fills up the little nooks and crannies in the rocks, the vast ocean will come, making its way up over the whole land. Little pools that were left behind, isolated worlds with all their little creatures that have already made the rounds of their pathetic tiny place and know it too well will become part of that massively larger world – they will be joyfully amazed when the tide comes in.
Here comes the infinite ocean, filling up all the little pools and making them one with a world that was always teeming with more life-filled life than they could have imagined. Poor little Mr. Limpet and Ms. Crab, stuck in their little pools, scurrying around and around, everything the same until the vast ocean moves in.
But of course, there is an abundance of life in our little pools only we have lost our capacity for wonder. Satan has dulled us. And the present wonders are only part of other wonders; our present little worlds are part of an infinitely wonderful world now existing and one day to appear openly in all its fullness. God does not leave us without clues as to the richness ahead. Satan is not the only one operating in this world.
Chesterton tells us that when we see a boy and girl going together we call it a “love affair”. He explodes with pleasure and tells us it is not a love affair, it is another Eden, a new creation with a new Adam and Eve who will people the world all over again. God is always carrying out experiments like that. We can smile at that kind of talk if we want to, but try telling two young lovers that others have fallen in love just as they have and have been doing it for millennia. They will agree but then they will explain to you immediately and with passion, “It wasn’t like this.” The old, the very old things continue to live and are cherished down the centuries while the “fashionable” dies every other day. It is true that God’s gift of human love is not quite the same when we take it from His hand, but enough of its original loveliness remains to let us know what the possibilities are in another phase of living.
Let’s to church now and see if it is the same as it was last time. On the way let’s see if we can spot the look of eager expectation on the face of the derelict buildings or the worn-out old dog that always sits on the corner or the three-legged cat that seems to have that “I can’t talk right now” look about her as she limps her way to some appointment. You know, the eager look that Paul spoke about in Romans 8:19-21. “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
It is a strange claim, but he says they are all waiting for people like us to come into our glorious inheritance because then things will change for them. Maybe that tired old dog and three-legged cat are saying more to us than we can hear. Maybe we are getting old in more ways than one. Who knows, maybe we will walk into a house one of these days and see God sitting on the floor more astonished at a baby’s wiggling toes than the baby is. On the other hand, maybe He is always doing it and one of these days when we grow up and get younger we will walk into a house and catch Him at it. And when we do maybe from some great distance, if we listen really hard, we will hear the shrewd deceiver groan knowing his agenda is doomed to failure.
