The Third Candle

There is a single rose coloured candle in the Advent wreath, a pale pink spire amid the faintly scented evergreen boughs and the stately purple columns that mark each Sunday of the season of preparation. The delicate pink candle is lit on the penultimate Sunday of Advent. Not on the last Sunday of the season, or on Christmas Eve itself, but somewhere near the end. Not quite at the end, but nearby. Some Christian traditions are more formalized than others and in the protestant way, we might talk about Hope, Love, Joy and Peace during the yuletide season as abstract or spiritual realities of our faith but we probably have to look up which idea belongs to which Sunday anew each year. It is easy to forget why one candle somewhere near the end of the season is different than all the others. 

The third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete Sunday to our liturgical brethren. Joy Sunday. An idea that encompasses so much more than those three letters can convey. It is the unrestrained response of joy and elation as we come to the place where our waiting ends and our anticipating begins in earnest. 

Rejoice! The Lord is nigh! 

He’s almost here. 

It is the moment when the engine revs before power hits the wheels. It is when the orchestra all comes into tune as one sound for the opening bar of a performance. It is when the beginning is about to begin. Rejoicing Sunday is the Sunday when those who have been waiting spontaneously break into cheers at the entrance of the star.  Every nerve taut, every thought focused; as anticipation culminates in what is about to be fulfilled. 

Advent, as a season of preparation is characterized by both repentance and wild celebration. David danced with wild abandonment before the Lord as the Ark of the Covenant which carried the very presence of God between the wings of the cherubim on the Mercy Seat was brought into Jerusalem. The king’s worship of the Most High’s presence returning to dwell amongst His people Israel was total and utterly forgetful of himself, so great was his joy at God being with His people.

That is the promise of advent and of Gaudete Sunday. God will soon be among us. The Ark of the Lord is coming into the city of our God. Abandon yourself to worship as the divine Logos is clothed in flesh and reveals to us His name: Emmanuel. 

God with us.

The Church Behind Barbed Wire

A couple of weeks ago I found myself looking through the titles that line the shelves of my little church library. I was early and looking to entertain myself for a few spare minutes until the others arrived for prayer. As I scanned the colourful spines filling the shelves with an ecclectic mix of Biblical commentaries, biographies and Christian Romance fiction, a battered copy of  I Found God in Soviet Russia by John Noble caught my eye. I pulled it from its place and was soon absorbed in his story. 

An American stranded in Germany for the course of WW2, John Noble found himself behind a new enemy’s lines in the Soviet-occupied zone of post-war Germany. Quickly arrested without charges, the young man was confined in an East German prison, and two Soviet-operated former Nazi concentration camps;— until finally he was shipped east with a ten year sentence to slave labour in a Siberian gulag. And, the thing about the gulag—you weren’t meant to survive it. The Soviet penal system intended to wring every last bit of strength from a person’s body before erasing him from memory. Bitter cold, near starvation, hopelessness, and unimaginable cruelty were the daily lot of gulag prisoners. It's a story that none of us would choose for ourselves.

It was in the midst of Noble’s starvation in his first days of arbitrary imprisonment that God intervened. He didn’t send an angel to open the prison door and lead the formerly worldly young man out. Instead, the Almighty God joined him in prison. And thus began John Noble’s sojourn as an ambassador for Christ in one of the most hopeless places on earth;—a place no missionary could be sent. The Soviets sentenced John Noble intending for him to die, but God sent him to tell others how to live.

Noble's account witnesses to the world the existence—and explosive growth—of the Church Behind Barbed Wire. Prisoners of every ethnic, religious and cultural extraction found themselves desperate to worship together in secret without deference to denomination or tradition. Miracles were worked and people were saved even as they died. Orthodox priests served communion to prisoners with water standing in place of wine, and hoarded crumbs of bread for the body of Christ. Nuns who refused to do work for the devil through atheistic communism frightened their captors with their miraculous survival of torture and exposure to the Siberian cold. Lutherans shared their memorization of the Word. Baptists evangelized bringing revival. The Church Behind Barbed Wire had such a powerful testimony that even as the Soviet guards seized the smuggled Bibles—they hoarded them— hungry to read the Word of God themselves. 

Wherever you are is not an accident.

 It is a commission. 

In the midst of suffering, it is easy to wonder about the goodness of God for allowing it. It is more difficult to regard yourself as an agent of light sent undercover into darkness. But that is the truth. God purposefully places His people behind enemy lines to be agents of His Kingdom;

  “…to proclaim freedom for the captives and the release from darkness for the prisoners…” (Isaiah 61:2) 

Milk and Honey

The following article appeared in the Sept/Oct issue of live magazine. 

When I was a child my parents fought the good fight for Family Time. After supper while the mostly empty dishes sat unwashed and the mostly full water glasses sat sweating on the corner of each placemat, my mom would pull out the increasingly dog-eared copy of the One Year Bible and embark on the daily reading. We were soon behind the prescribed day and one year eventually stretched to five as we slowed to a plod through Numbers and Deuteronomy and my siblings and I grew languid in our chairs as so-and-so begat such-and-such. I picked at the stray grains of rice that stuck to the blue quilted placemats my grandmother had made and listened with varying degrees of willingness. Some nights there was a lot of grumbling. Whether it was the Children of Israel or the children of David and Sylvia, it’s hard to say with much certainty.

But it was during Family Time that I first became aware of God’s way with words; His power of description. We were in Exodus and His promise to take the Israelites into a land flowing with milk and honey caught my attention. I wasn’t a literally-minded child, so I didn’t imagine rivers of sticky gold flowing down from the hills of Canaan or milk bursting forth in a geyser of rich abundance. But it did arrest my imagination, this phrase—a land flowing with milk and honey—and I let it roll around on my tongue like dessert.

The goodness of God is like milk and honey. Unexpectedly rich, delectably sweet; ingredients hidden in everything. But neither milk, nor honey come without time and effort. They are both the product of creation fulfilling its purpose in time to the glory of God. Milk is rich and nourishing. Honey is sweet and potent. It’s a strange and beautiful pitch,  ‘flowing with milk and honey’,  God’s own description of His intended goodness to His people.

This goodness of God’s is flowing everywhere—is always being made in unexpected pockets all over my life— if I have eyes to perceive it. If I keep my vision clear through humility and thankfulness. If I’m not watching that metaphorical clock with the mocking expression on its face and silently accusing God of abandonment. It is in the waiting and the pain that God’s goodness becomes rich and sweet. Where it is made memorable and sustaining instead of quickly consumed and quickly forgotten. Time is essential for refining my focus, for revealing what needs to be treated; for making honey sweet and milk rich in nourishment. It was the passage of time that made a word from an abashed stranger—who sheepishly approached to tell me that God wanted me to know that my unravelled engagement was not a waste—a nourishing balm to my wounded thoughts. God saw the whole picture painted in years and He said that it wasn’t a waste. The sweetness of that message lingers still through the revolving seasons of a life that didn’t unfold as planned. 

God allows time to compound His goodness; intensifying it to an unfathomable sweetness that can only be tasted at the kairos of His will. Such as when my staunchly atheist grandfather suddenly proclaimed the power of the cross from his death bed to the utter astonishment of all. Generations had prayed for his salvation—from his own aged father on his knees beside his own hospital bed pleading for the soul of his son, to his great grand-children praying unprompted for ‘Great Grandpa Wolf to love Jesus’;— honey and milk made sweet and precious in the making, flowing over a century of yearning prayer for one self-made man who was unmade by his saviour in the twilight weeks of his earthly life. 

God’s goodness is so much better than anything I could dream up. Moments so sweet and rich that they practically take your breath away like some careful confection of honey-sweetened cream. Answers from God made richer by time bringing them forth in the proper season. 

Art Revealing Truth: We like free stuff

"It takes a lot of guts to have nothing at your age! Yeah, most people would be ashamed! But you've got the courage to just say, 'The hell with it! I'd rather have nothing than settle for less." 

(Elaine May, Ishtar)

Cover Art by Cody Andreasen. Still the greatest.

For the next couple of days the Kindle version of my novel Altruism in Gophers is available for free download on Amazon. How silly would you be if you didn't download it and tell all your friends to do the same? (So silly, it's embarrassing. Don't let that happen to you. Go download it. Seriously. I'll wait.)

 Since I published the novel a year ago, I've received wonderful messages and phone calls from readers letting me know their thoughts about it. I'm humbled by how many people of disparate ages and situations have told me how much they related to dear Winston in his loveable loser-ness and how they were rooting for his success. Such conversations thrill me. I love talking about the ideas presented in stories. I love that a story will reveal, often unintentionally, a greater truth.  It is especially gratifying when others find the stories that I have written worth talking about. My love tank over-floweth in such conversations.  So, to all who have taken the time to reach out and let me know your thoughts--even if it was only to object to a certain conclusion,--I appreciate it.

 One question that I am often asked is, "So, how long did it take you to write it?"

Then it is my turn to feel embarrassed at how slow I am at getting my thoughts together; at solving the imaginary problems that I created.
"Depends on how you count," I answer, stalling for time. "Just writing? I have no idea. Probably not too terribly long. Since I first had the idea? Since I first started? Years and years." I used to feel ashamed about this. I would see how prolific some writers can be and I would feel like I wasn't working hard enough. (And certainly, there are days when that is the case.) But I have come to learn some things since I inadvertently began this craft.  Paramount among them is this: It takes as long as it takes. Does it frustrate me that the graphic novel project I wrote in an afternoon and submitted without editing was picked up for publication, whereas the other graphic series project that I spent years upon, yet languishes? You know it does. But I am less cranky about it than I used to be because I am less insecure.

There is a fickleness to the creative process because art is revelatory. Like a painstaking archeological dig, it is exposes to view what is hidden and buried.  It connects humanity through our shared recognition of experience.  A good book, a brilliant film, a beautiful painting or a powerful song have the ability take our internal insular experience and connect us to others who have felt the same things. Art makes connections between people where no obvious connections exist. Some writers have the ability to do this swiftly while others--like myself--do not.

 Altruism in Gophers took a long time to come together because, like its protagonist, it is a late bloomer.  But the occasionally barren and often lengthy nature of my creative process is not your problem. This is a fast-paced culture, after all. You can download the kindle version of Altruism in Gophers and be reading it before the current minute runs out. You, dear reader, were not the one with the ideas hanging out in the recesses of your mind for years and years. You just get to enjoy the finished product. (Free! Free! Free! in this limited time offer...) Go to Amazon and check it out.

The Drowsiness of Evil

"Now my beauties, something with poison in it, I think, with poison in it. But attractive to the eye and soothing to the smell. Poppies. Poppies will put them to sleep. Now they'll sleep..." 

-The Wicked Witch of the West

There is a scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her friends must cross a field of poppies in order to reach the Emerald City which lies within their sight on the horizon. The poppies are beautiful and seemingly harmless, and the path ahead looks pleasant and easy. Dorothy and co. enter the field without trepidation. They do not know that the poppies have been enchanted by their enemy, the Wicked Witch of the West. As they wade into the field of flowers, an unnatural exhaustion begins to overwhelm them so that they lie down and go to sleep.

It is easy for Christians living in the wealth and comfort of the Western world to regard persecution as something that other Christians experience. Missionaries tell us their stories. The news (sometimes) reports the suffering and violent hardships experienced by Christians in other parts of the world and we look at our own pain and think that nothing we’ve experienced qualifies as persecution on that scale. We aren’t being martyred. No one is bursting into our homes to slaughter us lest we renounce Christ. We aren’t second class citizens. We don’t have to pay a special tax because we’re believers. Occasionally, we get mocked on television or sidelined politically. But when we compare ourselves to Christians elsewhere, we might think we’ve got nothing to either worry about or show for ourselves.

When we believe this, we are in danger of placing our suffering and experience somewhere beyond the context of Scripture and risk being deceived. The book of Job reveals the role that the spiritual realm plays in human suffering. Job was persecuted by Satan for his righteousness. While his family, his livelihood and his health all suffered, his anguish was spiritual and psychological in nature. The kind of persecution experienced by Christians in the wealthy and comfortable nations of the world is less overt than the outright violence experienced by some of our fellow believers. It is subtler, easier for us miss. The Wicked Witch of the West’s bewitching of the environment was no less a snare to Dorothy and her friends than the flying monkeys sent to harass and them on other parts of their journey. Sleepiness was arguably the most effective tactic. It was the one they didn’t recognize; making it just as deadly to Dorothy’s purpose of reaching the Emerald City as outright attack.

Christians are also looking to reach a glittering city on the horizon. And while it may look like we’re just crossing a field of flowers, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a deadly enemy lurking nearby.

“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)

Hearing God When You Can't Hear

People get nervous when you tell them that God spoke to you in a dream. I get that. There is no way to fact-check a dream. Dreams are purely individual experiences and so their interpretation is utterly subjective. The divide between ‘delusional’ and ‘spiritual’ is a little too hazy to be comfortable for anyone. Even so—God speaks in dreams. There’s a multitude of examples throughout the Bible. As such, we cannot ignore dreams—at least—we should not ignore certain dreams. I had one the other night. A dream so vivid, so unsettling, that I awoke certain of the fact that it was not one of the usual half-forgotten dreams that generally populate the night. This dream made me uneasy because while it seemed to be a spiritual dream, it wasn’t pretty. It was disgusting, actually. It is the only dream in which I can ever remember smelling anything. Visually, too, it was assaulting. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure my theology had totally prepared me for God speaking to me in a dream about horrifying plumbing problems. 

It is a good reminder: God isn’t particularly concerned about our notions of propriety.

The dream stayed with me as I went about my morning routine. I didn’t understand it, but I wanted to. As I prayed—asking God if there was something there for me—the meaning of the dream fell into my mind like life-saving supplies air dropped behind enemy lines. God was telling me that I had placed certain hopes in the wrong place of priority in my life and it was making a huge disgusting mess of where I live. 

This was a transcendent revelation, but it was not the kind of revelation I was expecting. I wanted an answer as to why my hopes didn’t seem to be coming to fruition and when I might expect a little light on the horizon, so to speak. Instead, God told me I was wrong. My hopes weren’t wrong or sinful, but rather what I had unknowingly done with them. I didn’t mean to let these hopes—represented in my dream as carefully wrapped bundles of white gauze—block the drain and back everything up to the point of contamination. I thought I was doing well.  I thought I had everything in order. I thought I was right according to God and everyone. 

But I wasn’t.

Here’s the stark reality: It is pride that keeps us from hearing from God. We can call it other things; mask it with the appearance of different problems. Nevertheless, deep down at its root, it is pride that hinders our ability to hear what He is saying. Pride forms the impenetrable earplugs that block out everything but our own assessments. Pride is coming up with alternate explanations to avoid surrendering our plans and judgements to God because it feels like it would be the death of us to do so. Pride doesn’t always look haughty, sometimes it looks perfectly reasonable. Pride doesn’t know it is proud. It just thinks it is right.

“The source of revelation-knowledge is found as you fall down in surrender before the Lord. Don’t expect to see Shekinah-glory until the Lord sees your sincere humility.” (Proverbs 16:33 TPT)

God never lies. He will not participate with you in a fallacy. Whether it is in disordered hopes or a false view of our own importance or insight. He is always speaking exactly what we need to hear. If we aren’t hearing Him, then we know that somewhere pride has gotten in the way. And, perhaps, if you are like me and a subversive pride has so stopped your ears without your being aware of it, the mercy of God might just drop a dream into your head to wake you up.

(A version of this article was published in the March/April 2019 edition of live magazine. Check them out. )

A word from an "Everyday (fill in your appropriate citizenship)":

“It’s all about fear and greed.”

Back when I was first trying my hand at the stock market —and losing— that’s the perspective that my father gave me.

“It’s all about fear and greed.”

You sell your position because you are afraid the stock will go down and you will lose money. You buy because you think the stock will go up and you will make money. Fear prompts one decision. Greed, the other. 

This extends beyond the market to politics. Particularly, in election season, we ‘Everyday’ citizens get a chance to hear each party’s pitch on what exactly we should be afraid of, and what we can hope to get our grubby little hands upon if we just put our vote on their right group. 

Fear and greed—the basis of every sales pitch. Whether it is the #lifegoals marketing on Instagram—selling a filtered, imaginary world where every bit of reality’s clutter is pushed out of the frame; or political candidates calling your views ‘deplorable’ or ‘knuckle-dragging’, or some equally friendly phraseology. You hear that and think, " I don’t want to be lumped in with such unpopular folks, I’d better toe the party line. What is it these days?”

It’s all about fear and greed.

Here’s what I want from my government: Get out of the way. Get out of the way of business. (They are the only ones creating jobs.) Get out of the way of the economy. Don’t grandstand your virtue by running down the economic engine of one part of the country in order to buy votes in another.  Don’t tax us into the ground so that you can send money to other countries, participate in meaningless international agreements, pay for the high priced hookers of foreign despots you court for sweetheart deals. Don’t hamper the healthcare market and then tell me its too expensive not to let the government run it. Don’t subsidize some industries and kneecap others.  Don’t tell us what we can earn. Don’t tell us how to raise our kids. Don’t tell us who we are. 

We know who we are. And, we know who you are, too.

Get out of the way. 

Don’t try to get me to trade my personal autonomy for free stuff. Don’t tell me that if I don’t give up my freedom, I’ll be sorry. Don’t threaten me. Don’t try to make me vote for you by telling me to be afraid. Don’t try to turn voters into prostitutes—even those high priced ones— who sell their autonomy for money.

I don’t want the government to be my dad. I don’t want the government to be my pastor or God. 

Get out of the way.

Promise me that and maybe we can come to some kind of an understanding.

Why I Don’t Believe the Media about Anything (Anymore).

“Fine. But I seriously don’t believe you.”

That’s what the monotone slow-talker with black eyeliner said to me when I told him that, no, I didn’t have any money for him. I was eighteen years old and waiting with some friends for a train from Munich to Salzburg to take us back to school at the end of the weekend. He opened flatly with, “Don’t mind the makeup,” as though the scrolling black curlycues and paisleys decorating the majority of his face were just an unfortunate sunspot that had appeared—nothing to do with him, see—rather than a bizarre indication of what he had been up to in the hours previous to our early morning run-in.

“Don’t mind the makeup,” and “Fine. But I seriously don’t believe you,” the comments that bookended our brief interaction, have since become staples in my lexicon. I quote that eyeliner fellow whenever the occasion arises; delivering the lines with the prerequisite deadpan monotone that was fashioned, I can only suppose, in admiration of Ben Stein and aided by extensive use of narcotics. This was back before Germany was on the Euro and most of us had spent the last of our weekend’s budget of Deutschmarks buying breakfast. But even if that hadn’t been the case; even if my pockets had been replete with surplus cash, my answer would have been the same. “No, sorry. I don’t have any money for you.” He persisted, flatly requesting smaller and smaller denominations before finally concluding our interaction with a condemnatory, “Fine. But I seriously don’t believe you.”

It was a funny line given the circumstances—as though his credulity was essential to my well being—but I appreciated picking up the line nonetheless because I’ve found myself saying the same thing in response to the media a lot these days. Clickbait headlines. Social Media posts formulated to induce viral outrage. Newscasts so steeped in assumed bias that it is breathtaking. 

Fine, but I seriously don’t believe you. 

Journalism as an institution was created to report the who, what, where, when, and why of current events. Those five questions formed the bones of every story. Nowadays, however, finding those details in a given article feels like voluntarily treasure hunting in the midst of an Orwellian Two Minute Hate. Either these reporters are really bad writers, or the media seems to have an active disinterest in pursuing and conveying the facts in clear and concise terms. They have abandoned their noble journalistic origins, clamouring to be an instant Commentariat instead, interested only in shaping your interpretation of those facts with correct groupthink. That is, if you can get the facts at all. The who, what, where, and when—the once essential contextual pillars of every story are often hidden in the miasmic narrative of why. The interpretation is always paramount over the details.

This is an era where clicks determine editorial direction and anonymous ‘sources’ whose unverified claims are belched all over the airwaves nonstop until the next outrage. Who are these sources, though? What is their credibility? Shouldn’t such details matter? Where is the editorial integrity that held back a story unless a source was willing to go on the record, or their claims could be corroborated elsewhere? It was that editorial restraint and character that made us trust news media in the first place. It was those abandoned standards that demarcated the journalists from the gossip-mongers.

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” (John Adams)

Word, John Adams. However, those with the means and agenda have created a workaround: promote the notion that there is no such thing as objective truth and watch this pesky factual problem evaporate. ’Facts’ are less stubborn if the truth can be whatever you want it to be. If truth is not inviolable, then it is merely a matter of narrative opinion. The facts of biological sex must be changed if they do not correspond to the subjective nature of how an individual might feel. A human life becomes the dissociative ‘products of conception’, rather than an unborn baby dismembered alive in the womb. The cultural slump away from adherence to the principle of objective truth leaves us all vulnerable to the manipulation of narrative. And this is the first reason why I seriously don’t believe the media anymore. If there is no recognition of objective truth, then there is no such thing as fact. All that remains is someone else’s narrative.

The second reason for my media disdain is that everything is a crisis these days. No matter what, it is always the worst that things have ever been. How else are you going to get people’s attention in the age of 24/7 news? Whether it is clickbait headlines that always imply that someone is trying to keep something from you, or the fear that sells you new diets; the politics of indignation and victimization; or disaster movie plots sold as planetary realities, fear is the primary tool of manipulation. Fear of loss. Fear of destruction. Fear of not having the correct virtuous opinions in the face of an online mob. Fear is the conduit by which we receive much of our information from the media.

“The world is on fire! This leadership is unhinged! We’re careening toward destruction!”

Ho hum.

If everything is always a crisis, then it seems like nothing really is. You would think that at some point someone in one of these newsrooms would have internalized the lesson in the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.  Soon we will need a new word to describe actual crises—one that won’t get bandied about based on partisan political expediency. (I suggest ‘hullabaloo’. Besides being fun to say, having to say it with TV anchor seriousness would drastically cut down on flippant usage. “Local emergency agencies sprang into action to deal with the humanitarian hullabaloo created by rising flood waters…” But I digress.)

There is a third reason, too, for my media disbelief. Culturally speaking, we have squandered a valuable trait of our Christian inheritance—that is, healthy skepticism. It may seem like an anachronistic juxtaposition to put skepticism as a legacy of faith, but that is only because we have drifted far from understanding the intellectual foundations of Christianity. In so doing, we have deranged and diluted our definition of what constitutes skepticism. The meaning has come to be synonymous with doubt in the Judeo-Christian God, rather than the mechanism of examination of any given assertion. Many ‘skeptics’ parrot Richard Dawkins with the same surety as though he were God and his word was the final one. These people often haven’t examined the matter for themselves, they have only found someone else in whom to believe. As Bob Dylan aptly sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody.” They have chosen their own high priests to mediate between them and ‘truth’; having taken on the identity of skeptic without participating in its action by conducting their own search. The reason for this is pure laziness of the intellectual, spiritual, and physical variety. We cannot be bothered to search out a matter for ourselves, and so instead we piggyback on someone else’s analysis.

That is not the tradition bequeathed to Western Civilization by Christianity. The Berean Christians were described as being of “more noble character […] for they received the message with eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” (Acts 17:11) The Bible itself commends and recommends that individuals devote themselves to the examination and discernment of what is true.

But test everything, hold fast to what is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

But solid food is for the mature, for those who have had their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:14)

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)

I could go on and list other verses pointing out the same thing. Test, discern, practice, because there is no end to the kinds of deceptions that we will encounter in the world. And the thing about a deception is that it is good at looking like the truth—particularly when delivered to us from slick and serious-looking newsrooms by people who are often undiscerning themselves. 

The end result of healthy skepticism is not doubt, but a reasoned and reasonable belief in the truth. Skepticism is the means by which we should be testing every claim so that we can—through practice—discern what is good and what is evil. This is the hard way, though. There is no room for intellectual, spiritual, or physical sloth. This is daily practice. We should not abdicate our individual responsibility to discern by delegating the task to opinion-makers, politicians, celebrities, or even the news media. You, and you alone, are responsible for the things you believe. And, the things that you believe will determine your whole life. But that is a subject for another article. In the mean time, the next time the media dresses itself up in crisis and hides the details and attempts to shame you into joining their groupthink, you too can respond in a flat monotone, “Fine. But I seriously don’t believe you."

The Chosen One

(A version of the following article was published in the January/February edition of live magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com.)

“You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.” 

-J.R.R Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Read the back of nearly any book in the Fantasy section of your local bookstore and you will very likely come across the Chosen One. Within a sentence or two you will be introduced to the one person who can stop the world-ending events that threaten. So ubiquitous is the premise of one seemingly unremarkable individual plucked from the obscurity of their circumstances to perform an impossible feat, that to name a story within the genre that doesn’t follow that narrative is a challenge. Sure, the setting and details vary but from Star Wars to Harry Potter; The Matrix to The Lord of the Rings and everything in between—the idea of the the fate the world hinging upon the Chosen One is as prevalent in our cultural stories as—well—the notion of a dusty ancient book that contains the prophecies about the Chosen One.

While one might be tempted to regard this familiar plot as hackneyed and overplayed; its reoccurrence the sign of an unoriginal storyteller; (and indeed, in many cases, that is likely true)—nonetheless, the fact that ‘the Chosen One’ appears time and time again in our cultural narratives seems to indicate that something else is at work—something deeper. Stories resonate and communicate to the heart of mankind more effectively than anything else. Jesus taught the people using parables to communicate truth through the powerful illustrative effect of a narrative. Stories demonstrate the stakes and the obstacles that surround a truth with greater impact than spreadsheets or powerpoint presentations. We don’t need to take notes to remember them for they are empathetic undertakings. We find ourselves weeping or cheering for the imaginary. Stories get in our heads and hearts and we do not forget them.

The Chosen One resonates again and again because it is true. The plot is written with indelible ink on our hearts and played out against the backdrop of the world. To be plucked from the obscurity of the masses by a force greater than ourselves for a task of monumental importance rings in pitch perfect truth with our humanity. To be loved. To be needed. To be important. To matter. To have been created for a purpose. The yearnings of the human heart are bound up in the story of the Chosen One. The messianic imagery of every Chosen One storyline speaks to the fact that mankind is looking for the One who will come and save the world. The stakes are high and time is running out. It is no mystery that the premise so pervades our cultural stories. We know deep down that our situation is desperate. We know deep down that we need someone to save us.

Despite the implicit question contained in the word ‘chosen’, the World does not know who will be doing this choosing of monumental importance. And—that makes a lot of people nervous. Instead of the obvious, writers fantasize about impersonal forces;—using placeholder words like, ‘destiny’ and ‘the universe’ to cover their fear of the personal God who takes interest in our lives and the events that surround them. The God, who C.S Lewis reminds us in the character of Aslan, isn’t safe, but is good.

We are chosen. Not by chance or an impersonal force; we were created from nothing and appointed to tasks upon which the fate of the world swings. We are called to proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. We are called to be children of God reflecting His attributes for His glory. We are called by our names from the darkness of a world spoiled by sin into His perfect presence. We are the chosen ones called to pattern our lives after the example of the Chosen One of God: the Messiah. The Chosen One populates our fiction because it is the substance of our spiritual reality. And, we know this is true because the prophecies in that ancient book have come to pass.