Monday, July 30, 2012

Learning to Suffer

Last year in a post entitled, "Are You Blessed or Cursed? Suffering at the Margin,," I discussed the notion that many people consider themselves to be suffering when they are not blessed as much as others.  Not being blessed as much as you would like does not mean that you are "cursed", and one of the most difficult challenges we face in life, and certainly one of mine, is dealing with the disappointments we encounter.  People of our time today are so used to having their needs met and their wishes fulfilled that when each and every desire is not granted, we feel disappointed. 

We may have abundance to eat and comfort in our shelter, but we expect more, and are used to getting it.  As someone once joked, a millionaire is quite happy with the money he has unless you put him in a room with billionaires. Some are faced with true hardships, and others with inconveniences.  Sometimes the desires of our hearts are prideful and covetous in nature.  I would not begin to try and tell you that a difficulty you are facing is not bona fide suffering; only you can determine where that line is.  I would only caution you that not making the varsity cheerleading squad might not be suffering to the same degree as compared to not making it out of the operating room after a ruptured aneurysm.  "They didn't make it" can mean a lot of different things.

The Apostle Paul lived a brutal life after his conversion. "From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one.  Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils of the the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness,--" (II Cor 11:24-27).  These were not mere disappointments. 

But see what Paul says in Philippians 4:11-12: "Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned whatever state I am, to be content.  I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound.  Everywhere and in all things, I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need."  As one of my favorite Christian writers, Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones noticed, Paul was a sensitive man, proud by nature, and an intensely active person.  What could be worse for him than to be imprisoned?  Yet he was content.

So how do we become content? How are we to be contented not only in sufferings but in lesser disappointments?  Look again at verse eleven above: "I have learned...to be content."  We do not magically become content.  Even receiving Christ as our savior and being indwelt by the Holy Spirit does not instantaneously make us content.  We must learn to be content.  In all circumstances.

Now stop and think about that for a minute.  Suppose we were never disappointed.  God can give us everything we want, or everything we need, or some amount in between.  (We will leave aside the question of differentiating between a want and a need.)  There is no guarantee that receiving everything we want would make us happy; most statistics show that only about half of lottery winners are happier than before.  And few of us are blessed with receiving every single thing that we want.  As for suffering, what if you never experienced any?  Could God, in His infinite power, grant these things?  Of course He could.  But He chooses not to in order to teach us contentment.  We cannot learn to be content in all circumstances, the desired ones and the undesired ones, unless some of those circumstances are undesired.  And God, who allows the disappointments, provides us the means to be content.  In Philippians 4:12 we are told by Paul, who has now demonstrated his complete authority in this matter, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

We must not pity ourselves in our disappointments.  We must not become bitter in our ungranted supplications.  We do not receive all of the grapes for which we leap as did Aesop's fox, and we must not assume they are sour; they may be perfectly wonderful grapes that God did not desire us to have.  There are many lessons to be learned in our disappointments and sufferings (as I hope my forthcoming book will soon illumine).  I believe that when we learn to be content in our disappointments that God will find it less necessary to allow them; I know that we will continue to encounter them until we reach the realm of complete fulfillment, where we will be eternally contented.

Monday, July 23, 2012

All Bleeding Stops

Cardiac surgery can be a demanding discipline. Although the physical and technical challenges can be arduous, the mental and emotional demands can be far more draining. A week ago I saw a patient back in the office who had undergone complex heart surgery and had been given little chance of survival given the terrible condition his heart was in before the operation. His wife was with him, crying tears of gratitude that he had pulled through the surgery and was doing so well. That same week, another wife was crying tears of sorrow because we could not save her husband whose heart and body were too weak to make it after a long and difficult operation on a failing heart.

Because we as surgeons must face these issues daily, we must stiffen our resolve and not succumb to the sometimes dreadful realities of heart surgery. One of the worst problems we deal with regularly is bleeding. Patients undergoing open-heart surgery bleed afterwards for a lot of reasons. Many are on blood thinners of one kind or another preoperatively. A lot of them have poorly functioning blood clotting systems, the very system that you and I take for granted when we bleed after a cut or injury. Worst of all, in addition to the tissue trauma of surgery, when we place the patient on the heart-lung machine during the procedure we must give the patient massive doses of blood-thinners to keep the blood from clotting while it circulates outside the body and receives oxygen from the pump, which takes over the function of the heart and lungs while we stop the heart to work on it. Also, the very act of running the blood through the heart-lung machine causes derangements in the blood clotting system. Finally, in many heart operations there are many, many suture lines where we have sewn things together, and these can leak blood as well. For the vast majority of our patients, bleeding is not a problem. We give medications at the end of the procedure to reverse the blood thinners and their blood clots appropriately. However, some patients do bleed after heart surgery and some bleed a lot. In fact, it is accepted that about one to two per cent of the time we will have to take a patient back to the operating room for a second procedure to get the bleeding under control. Very rarely, the bleeding can be uncontrollable if the patient's own blood-clotting system refuses to function normally. Sometimes we spend hours in the operating room trying to get the bleeding to come under control. I had to do this last Friday, as a matter of fact.

So an old saying among heart surgeons, handed down from decades ago, offers the following proverb: "All bleeding stops." It is a dry and sarcastic way of looking at the problem in a dispassionate way. All bleeding will eventually stop. Either you, the surgeon, along with your surgical team and blood products from the blood bank as well as time and carefully placed sutures will get the bleeding under control, or you won't, and the patient will bleed to death. Either way, the bleeding stops.

  Likewise, for the Christian, if you think about it, all suffering stops. For most of us, our trials are for but a season. God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, knows what He needs to accomplish in our lives with the tests of faith He sends our way, and He knows exactly how much and for how long we must endure. However, for some of us, we will be stricken with a chronic or even terminal form of suffering, which we must endure until we die. As a Christian, we then enter the heavenly realm where there are no more tears.

We must embrace the fact that our time here on earth is but a small fraction of our eternal life. Sixty, eighty, or even a hundred years is a blink of an eye measured against forever. And our sufferings, dreadful as they may be, occur only during that blink. Either God stops our trial or trials while here on earth, or He doesn't. Either way, all suffering stops when we join Him to begin our life with Him. I must end on a somber note. for those who have not accepted Christ as their Savior, the suffering will never end. Forever is an awfully long time to endure. For those we know and love who are not Christians, it is imperative that we preach the Gospel to them that their eternal suffering may be turned to eternal joy.

  Many of us have heavy hearts this week following the brutal slayings in Colorado a few days ago. The bullets that entered the flesh of those poor people that died ended their brief blink of earthly life. Some are in the presence of God Himself, and will never suffer again. In heart surgery, we cannot save every patient, but we try all that we can for those entrusted to our care. Likewise, we will not see all around us saved by faith in Christ, but let us try our all to make sure they know the way of salvation, that one day they will know suffering nevermore.

Monday, July 16, 2012

What Would It Be Like to Be Humble?

What would it be like to be humble?  I mean, how would a humble person think and feel?

Over the last several weeks we have been discussing the sinner's inner tendency to sin.  Last week we talked about conquering sin in our lives, realizing two things: (1) We will  never have complete victory in this lifetime, and (2) We can only tame the sin in our lives by using the power of Christ.  We cannot achieve this by our own efforts.  The Holy Spirit, living within us, convicts us of our sin and gives us the strength to combat our fleshly desires and behavior. 

God's power is too overwhelming for Him to dole it out to just anyone.  They must be a person who can be trusted with such power, and I suggested that the prerequisite for receiving His power is humility.  Now here is the awkward thing.  Not only do you need that precious power from God, you need Him to also supply you with humility.  Some of us are not naturally endowed with a humble nature.  God, in His master plan of sanctification for us, must bring us to that state. 

Being converted from non-humble to humble is not always an easy process.  God must use several means to get us there.  Like a surgeon, God has many instruments at His disposal. If we are clearly out of His will with prideful sin, God may have to chastise us.  He may allow Satan to do His work for Him by means of spiritual warfare.  Job was a righteous man, "blameless and upright," (Job 1:8), yet he was further humbled by Satan's attacks on him (Job 42:1-6).  Even if we are in God's will, not sinning, He may further prune us of any part of us that carries pride within. So the ususal methods are chastisement, spiritual warfare, and pruning, or some combination of these.

As Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it, God chastises through circumstances, frequently through financial or material losses, and occasionally through health issues.  God's primary concern is not our happiness but our holiness.  And it is difficult to be humble if you are always successful.  You have to be humbled to have humility.  It is certainly not in our nature to actively seek out chastisement and being humbled.

With regards to pruning, we must recognize what God is doing in our lives so that we may cooperate with his plan.  When something painful wounds us, we must ask ourselves if God is trying to prune us of our pride.  And then we must not resist.  As C. S. Lewis put it, "But suppose you are up against a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good.  The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting.  If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless."

If you are a Christian, you will hate the sin in your life. You will long to be sin-free.  You will not obtain that in this lifetime; it is a chronic disease.  But if you seek humility with the same desire that God desires to see that in you, He will grant that.  It will require spiritual surgery, a pridectomy, to instill you with a humble spirit.  And only after you have been prepared in this way will God be able to entrust to you His power to conquer sin.  For some of us, it requires a daily trip to His operating suite.

And how does it feel to be humble? How does a humble person think and feel?  Since I am not there yet, I can only offer observations from the humble people that have graced my life.  I think that if there were any one single aspect that characterizes a humble person it is that they do not think of themselves.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't mean that they think poorly of themselves.  They do not debase themselves.  They do not have a false humility.  And they are not completely self-unaware.  They are perfectly able to look at themselves when needed and examine their lives.  But they do not dwell on themselves.  They are not constantly worried about themselves, what will happen to them, what other people will think of them.  They are not worried about pleasing themselves or pleasing others but pleasing God.  They do not focus on themseves because they are focused on God. 

If some of my earlier comments about God's methods are confusing, my new book, "Surviving the Suffering", should be out this fall.  It is currently in the final stages of layout, then on to marketing before it is released.  The entire book is built around the concept of diagnosing the causes of our sufferings, so that we may make the right decisions in dealing with each of those causes, including chastisement, spiritual warfare, and pruning as well as other causes of our sufferings.  I am hoping and praying that it will help those of you who are suffering now or will be, and that pretty much includes everyone.

I am also praying for humility.  That is a dangerous thing to do.  It can be a short trip for some or a lifetime journey for others.  I'll send you a postcard when I get there.

Monday, July 9, 2012

(S)inner, Part II

Last week we discussed the problems of sin as an ends and sin as a means.  I described sin as an ends, due to temptations from the world, the flesh, and the Devil whereby we are filled with a sinful desire for something and act upon it.  We usually rationalize this in advance, claiming that we have license to sin for one reason or the other.  I also detailed sin as a means, where we commit sin along the way to a worthy and Godly goal.  It is the way that we try and achieve that goal that results in sin.  We usually rationalize that form of sin in retrospect, claiming that we were only trying to do the right thing.  I find that form of sin much, much more difficult to identify and control, because our judgement is clouded by our focus on the good we are trying to accomplish. 

There could be many examples of these sins, and I am sure that upon reflection you could easily describe some.  For example, if you give in to a sinful desire to gamble irresponsibly because you love the sensual pleasure of gambling, that is sin as an ends.  You desire to sin, and somehow you justify it as not really such a big deal.  But suppose you are in a position of stewardship of funds for an organization, and you make a risky investment to "hit the jackpot" and obtain financial security.  Your judgement is clouded by your goal, which is a good one. When the investment goes bust, you then utter some of the saddest words I know: "I was only trying to help."

Or in the example I used last week, this would be the difference between driving to the adult bookstore for pornography and driving to church for worship, and cursing the driver that cut you off on the way to the pews.  "I was only trying to get to church, God."

How do we get victory over the sin nature in our lives?  Only Christ had immunity to the world, the flesh, and the Devil.  When a patient comes to me with coronary artery disease, I have to explain to them that I will do coronary bypass surgery on them and take a piece of vein from their leg and route blood from the aorta to the coronary artery below the blockage, thereby bypassing it. I also take great care to tell them that they have an underlying disease process called arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.  My procedure is a treatment for the disease, not a cure.  They will have to change their life and lifestyle to obtain victory over this disease, and change their diet, cholesterol intake, and exercise habits.  They will have to take lipid-lowering medications and cease smoking.  They will always have a tendency to form these blockages, and must try and slow the process down, lest they develop more obstructions in their coronary arteries or bypass grafts.

Likewise, a sin nature is a chronic disease.  There is no vaccination to provide immunity.  There are only measures we can take to control the disease, to treat it.  We will only be cured when we reach Heaven.  And like arteriosclerosis, it cannot be cured by willpower alone.  We can change our life and lifestyle, but only Christ can provide the cure, and that final cure awaits us us we cross over the threshold to our eternal life in Him.

Now here is the unpleasant part.  Christ has the power to give you to obtain victory over your sin nature.  But simply asking for it is not enough, even if you have a saving relationship with Him.  As Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it, "Do not agonize in prayer beseeching Him for power.  Do what He has told you to do.  Live the Christian life."  Well, again, that seems straightforward enough.  Go and sin no more.

But there is a real secret you must know if you desire Christ's power. 

There are two old quotations that come to mind.  One is from Lord Acton, and goes, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."  The second is an ancient proverb, possibly from Euripides, "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power."  So you can see the danger of power.  It is corrupting and leads to destruction in the wrong hands.  And there is no power stronger than Christ's.  He cannot give His power to those who would misuse it, and He cannot give it absolutely. 

Christ will only give His power to the humble.  As the Bible says in James 4:6, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."  God is not going to endow his perfect and magnificent power, the power to create a universe and destroy cities, the power to heal illnesses and change history, the power to save to eternal life and to defeat Satan, to someone who is not a worthy steward of that power.  He will only give that power to someone who has the necessary attribute of humility.  He cannot entrust it to someone that cannot be trusted with it. 

And, being the brilliant writer and theologian that I am, next time I will tell you how to have that humility. 

Monday, July 2, 2012

(S)inner



I watched a videotape of Steve Lawson, pastor at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mongomery, Alabama the other night.  In his usual rousing fashion, he discussed the inner battle that we all face in our struggle to attain victory over sin.  Being such a prolific sinner myself, I thought that I would weigh in on the matter.

Dr. Lawson discussed the influences that lead to our sin: the world, the flesh, and the devil.  However his focus was on the flesh, that part of our inner being that leads us to rebel against God and sin against Him.  Much of Paul's advice given in Galations 5:16-25 was discussed, where the list of the works of the flesh are detailed: "sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these."  The solution to these vices is straighforward: walk in the Spirit (v16) and crucify the flesh (v24).  Simple enough.  Verse 16 makes it sound as if any person who could put one foot in front of the other literally should be able to do it figuratively and spiritually--"walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh."

I have heard many pastors give simplistic and all-encompassing explanations for sinful behavior, saying such things as, "all sin begins as a lust in the heart," "all sin is related to pride and our desire to be as God is," or "covetousness is the root of sin."  And the seven deadly sins add a few more to the total root causes of sin: Lust, Pride, Envy, Greed, Wrath, Sloth, and Gluttony.  You can compare this to Proverbs 6:16-19:  "These six things the Lord hates,
                                    Yes, seven are an abomination to Him:
                                    A proud look,
                                    A lying tongue,
                                    Hands that shed innocent blood,
                                    A heart that devises wicked plans,
                                    Feet that are swift in running to evil,
                                    A false witness who speaks lies,
                                    And one who sows discord among brethren."

But I think it may be useful to look at sin from another perspective, because there is one type of sin in my life that is much more difficult to control than the other.  I would look at sin as an ends, and sin as a means.

Sin as an ends is much more easy to grasp and understand and fits the classical definition of sin as a result of our fleshly natures.  You have a fleshly desire, and you act upon it.  You desire pornography, so you go into the adult bookstore.  You desire to get drunk, so you go to the liquor store.  You desire to steal, so you shoplift in the department store.  You give in to a desire to wastefully gamble your savings, so you go into a casino.  You don't even have to get up off of the couch or get out of your chair for many of these vices; they are only a mouse-click away.

Sin as a means is much less straighforward and premeditated.  The object of your desire may be worthy or even holy and godly, but you go about getting to your goal in a sinful manner.  This would be the difference between driving to the adult bookstore versus driving to church on Sunday and cursing and giving the finger to the driver that just pulled out in front of you.  You didn't leave the house with premeditated sin on your mind or a fleshly desire, but you yielded to the flesh just the same.  You just wanted to get to church (good) but you did it with the wrong means (bad).  I am sure you can think of many other examples of where you were trying to reach an honorable goal and did so in a way that dishonors God.  I do it all the time, and find it much harder to identify and reign in.

We are always able to rationalize our sin.  I think that sin as an ends is usually rationalized beforehand.  "I am entitled to begin this affair because my marriage is so bad," or "this has been a really bad week, so I am going to get drunk."  Sin that occurs as a means is often rationalized in retrospect.  "I screamed at you because you weren't doing the job right," or "I ate that entire pizza because I was hungry."  Getting the job done right doesn't excuse wrath and hunger doesn't excuse gluttony.

Both categories of sin are things that we should not want to do or have done if we are Christians.  Just as Paul said, "For what I am doing, I do not understand.  For what I will to do, that I do not practice, but what I hate, that I do" (Romans 7:15).  This could apply to giving in to the flesh and committing a sin that you know in your heart is wrong in advance (ends), or realizing that you sinned in trying to do something that was genuinely right (means).

We will stop here and next time I will offer what I think may be one of the best ways to try and get a handle on these sins.