Rejecting Wisdom

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Recently came across a 2023 article by Jon Haidt on his Substack, “After Babel.” He shares how his friend, Greg Lukianoff, a defender of the free-speech rights of college students, made a brilliant connection between policies implemented by American universities and declining mental health. (The irony—the policies were intended to improve mental health.)

Lukianoff had learned to apply Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) while being treated for depression. CBT focuses on thinking patterns, called cognitive distortions, that can be both causes and symptoms of depression. They’re referred to as distortions because they don’t accurately reflect reality. Learning to overcome these habits (including catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, and emotional reasoning) contributes to psychological healing.

When we catastrophize, we look at a current issue or situation and jump to the conclusion that something catastrophic will happen if we don’t stop it or fix it immediately. I remember when I was learning to drive and the price of gasoline was threatening to skyrocket all the way up to two dollars a gallon. I thought the world would end.

It didn’t.

Most of the things we catastrophize about aren’t nearly as destructive as we imagine they’ll be. Human beings are amazingly resilient, both individually and as groups.

Black-and-white thinking means there are no gray areas. For example, every person is either good or evil and every action illustrates either love or hate. But in the real world each one of us is a mixed bag of thoughts and motivations. Even good people do bad things. Even bad people are capable of doing good things.

My dad used to say, ”Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.” Wikipedia describes this as an “error in which something good or of value is eliminated when trying to get rid of something unwanted.”* Black-and-white thinking often leads to making this mistake.

Emotional reasoning uses feelings, rather than logic, in making decisions. Rational thinking alone can lead to trouble if we don’t take into account the psychological impact that a seemingly logical action can have on someone. (As a nerd, I’ve done this too many times.) But basing decisions solely on emotions rarely leads to the best solution to a problem.

Lukianoff suggested to Haidt that the behavior of many college students and the policies of many college leaders is, in effect, reverse CBT. (I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but you can explore this idea in more detail in their 2018 book, The Coddling of the American Mind.)

Expressing deep concern about microaggressions is catastrophizing. Refusing to allow someone to speak on campus in their field of expertise because of a comment they’d made in a tweet concerning a completely different subject is throwing out the baby with the bathwater due to black-and-white thinking. Emotional reasoning is used to demand the removal of important textbooks from a college syllabus.

Universities are training and encouraging students to think in ways that have been proven to contribute to and prolong depression.

The Serenity Prayer

Then I happened to reread the “Serenity Prayer.” Originally composed in the early 1930s by Reinhold Niebuhr, a Protestant theologian, the prayer opens with, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

This prayer has been used successfully for many years (most famously by Alcoholics Anonymous) to help people overcome mental health issues and live better lives. But do we value its insights today?

Are we willing to accept that there are some things that we cannot change? Children have been told for at least a couple of generations now that they can do and have everything they want in this life. The message they’re hearing: Don’t accept the idea that there’s anything that you can’t change in order to get your own way.

Those who attract the most attention for trying to change the world often act like bullies or like spoiled children throwing a tantrum. Have bullies or tantruming children ever been considered courageous?

Do we desire wisdom, or would we rather just rush on to the next big thing without taking any time to contemplate whether it’s best to go there? Are we allowing wisdom to die out as we encourage electronic devices and artificial intelligence do more and more of our thinking for us?

Do we value wisdom and courage and the serenity of acceptance anymore?

Rejecting the past

Why is our culture rejecting the proven wisdom of the past? Wisdom that’s led many to better mental health. The fruit of that rejection can be seen in the increasing rates of mental health issues and deaths from despair.

A culture that lives this way weakens itself. (I’m tempted to say that it’s headed for destruction, but that might be catastrophizing.)

We seem to have adopted a definition of progress that means automatically dismissing anything old when something different comes along. No need to evaluate whether to accept the new. It’s always better simply because it’s newer. That’s how evolution works.

I saw this blatantly stated in a book about Robinson Crusoe and its imitators many years ago. (I no longer have the book, so I can’t identify its title and author with certainty.) There are probably other sources that I’m not familiar with that make the same assertion.

C. S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy, calls this “chronological snobbery … the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”

In contrast to this attitude, Lewis writes in The Case for Christianity, “Progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

What if we thought more carefully before taking that wrong turning in the first place? If we automatically reject the past, can we even recognize that old right road? Or will we build a new one that takes us even further from the truth?

I’m not saying that there was ever a golden age that we can go back to if we just overcome current ways of thinking and pass the right laws. I’m skeptical of any viewpoint that claims that there was once a time and a place where a majority of people were true Christians.

When Christianity is acceptable and popular, I have to question how many people are actually born again and how many are simply following the current philosophy without thinking it through and without any real repentance and change of heart. Jesus said, “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:14).

And I’m not anti-progress. I’m thankful for the developments in human thinking and technology that have occurred within my own lifetime.

Advances in medicine have led to longer, fuller lives. Personal computers have simplified the writing and rewriting process (thank You, Lord!), among many other benefits. We’re seeing greater equality between the races and the sexes. Pollution has been reduced and cleaned up.

Several decades ago, experts made great strides in understanding and treating mental health disorders. Talk therapies, like CBT. Medications that, when used wisely, can save lives. Now those advances are being replaced by newer ideas. Not because they didn’t work (when applied properly), but simply because they’re older.

Just as certain college policies can be seen as the opposite of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, rejecting the wisdom of the past can be seen as the opposite of progress.


*Recently, other writers have called my attention to some painful examples of how Wikipedia distorts the truth and refuses to change their story when their bias is pointed out to them. With those examples fresh in my mind as I was editing this post, I was tempted to find a different source for the explanation of this expression.

But then I realized that that might be a perfect example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Should I use Wikipedia for its beneficial articles? Or should I stop referring to it because of the obvious bias in other entries? Does citing Wikipedia in this blog imply that I trust it completely? What if I can’t tell how inaccurate an article is and I accept, and even spread, the false teaching that it promotes without realizing that I’m doing that? I’m still struggling with these questions.

 

 

 

Medical Care

 Hope or no hope

About twenty years ago Alan, a middle-aged brother in Christ, was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. From what I saw and heard, it appeared to be a time of great hope in the field of oncology. New treatments were being developed and approved. People were living longer with conditions that would have been deemed fatal just a few years earlier.

Alan’s oncologist told him that forty percent of patients responded well to the new chemotherapy regimens. That didn’t sound like a very high number to me, but it was certainly better than the old zero percent five-year survival rate.

Alan was determined to do all he could to beat the dreaded disease. Chemotherapy extended his life by three years. Without the new treatments, he would have died within six months. He was thankful for that additional time.

A few years ago Henry, an acquaintance from church who had recently retired, was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. I don’t know if it was the same kind as Alan’s, but it couldn’t have been any worse.

Time had passed. The fever of hope that had prevailed during Alan’s chemo days had cooled off. I’m not sure exactly what happened. Maybe that forty percent who initially responded so well died within five years after all, like Alan did.

Henry was told right from the start that his cancer was terminal. Treatment has extended his life about a year beyond his original prognosis, but he’s now on hospice.

The impact

Whose shoes would you rather be in, Alan’s or Henry’s? I had enough contact with Alan and his family during his treatment to see the impact that the sense of hope, the idea that he could maybe beat his cancer, gave them all. They lived each day looking forward to the possibilities of the future.

They weren’t in denial. They’d been advised by his oncologist to be realistic (he might die) but hopeful (he might live). As far as I could tell, they were applying that philosophy.

Alan didn't have an easy time of it during his last three years. He hit many bumps in the road. But I’ve heard that cancer patients who have a positive attitude respond better to treatment and live longer. Did Alan’s hope contribute to the length and quality of his life? It appeared to. Is Henry’s lack of long-term hope shortening his life and diminishing its quality? I don’t know.

Fleming Rutledge, writes in Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ, “A prisoner who knows he will be freed is a very different person from one who knows he will never get out. . . . If you know that your chemotherapy really might heal you, you can tolerate it a lot better than if it is just a last, desperate measure.”

Best practices?

I’m glad I’m not an oncologist. I’m not sure how I’d handle my stage IV patients. I know I’d want to be honest. That’s God’s will for us as His followers. But would I be tempted to offer hope even where there was none in order to give my patients a better life? Would I be capable of using that dreaded word “terminal,” knowing what the psychological impact could be?

From what I’ve heard, in the old old days doctors didn’t tell a patient that she was dying. The family would be informed, but not the victim. It was considered more humane. I wouldn’t want to go back to those times because of the deceit involved, but I wonder if there was a certain amount of wisdom behind that philosophy. A gentleness. A compassion.

Of course, a Christian facing a terminal diagnosis knows that death isn’t the end of the journey. He has hope even in the face of a fatal disease.

My heart, my gut wants to vote for the option of giving patients something to cling to. To campaign for doctors to be more like Alan’s than Henry’s. I want to see cancer sufferers being offered a chance to be upbeat, to live happier lives, to contribute to their own well-being.

I’ve known people who’ve miraculously survived a terminal diagnosis. Is it really right or best to tell someone that they have no future at all? Despite the statistics, do we really know who will live and who will die?

The spiritual impact

The other side of the coin: As a Christian, I can see the potential spiritual benefits of telling a person that he won’t survive an illness. We live in a death-denying culture. Few of us are willing or able to face our mortality head-on. A life-insurance ad on TV presents a spoof on this attitude. The narrator addresses those whose loved ones are going to die, because the viewer knows that that will never happen to him.

But when that terminal diagnosis comes, it’s a little harder to play pretend. Maybe some of those patients will turn their thinking toward eternity. Toward God. Toward heaven and hell. Maybe some of those souls will be saved before it’s too late.

My heart cries out to give cancer patients a little ray of hope, as Alan’s oncologist did. But my head realizes that the current practice is probably for the best.

What triggered all this internal wrestling? The shock and awkwardness of facing Henry’s wife as she told me what his doctor had said at the time of his initial diagnosis. I didn’t know how to respond.

I don’t know if it’s a specifically American thing or a general human thing, but most of us want to be able to offer words of hope and encouragement to someone facing difficult news: Look on the bright side. It might not be as bad as you think. Everything will be okay.

We have a hard time simply weeping with those who weep. Sharing their pain instead of trying to fix it.

I pray for the doctors who are dealing with these life-and-death situations every day. For their expertise. For the courage to speak difficult words to their patients. For compassion and mercy and wisdom. In the end, those attributes might be more important than whether or not they actually use the word “terminal.”

 

 

(This article was edited by the author on February 10, 2026.) 

 

 

Why Should They Believe?

A recent cultural shift

How can we expect our children to be dedicated to the one true God? Bible-believing Christians are a small minority in America. The dominant culture ignores or disdains our primitive ideas. Supporting biblical sexual morality is labeled hate speech.

Our country has changed drastically in my lifetime (sixty-plus years). As a child, my family only went to church at Christmas and Easter, and we rarely talked about spiritual issues at home. Yet I picked up a relatively accurate understanding of Christianity simply by living in America.

It wasn’t specifically taught in my public schools. There were no oral prayers being recited. But the cultural aspects snuck in.

We sang “America, America, God shed His grace on thee” and “God Bless America.” Our music classes presented Christmas programs with songs that reflected the original meaning of the holiday, not just the ones celebrating Santa Claus and snow. Our spelling words included omniscient and omnipotent.

Friends talked about God as if it was perfectly natural and reasonable to believe in Him. Everyone knew that BC meant Before Christ. We were a little confused about AD, though. Some kids speculated that it meant After Death. When we were considered old enough, we were taught—in public school—that it meant Anno Domini, Latin for “the year of our Lord.”

Fast forward to today.

I’m chatting with ten-year-old Michael at my church one evening. His parents are faithful believers. He has a good background in the Bible. He doesn’t openly question it, but he seems to have his doubts about the reality of some of its teachings.

Why should he believe it? He’s being bombarded every day with the message that it’s unimportant, it’s outdated, it’s based on superstition, it’s packed with hateful lies.

A historical cultural shift

For some reason Michael asks me what BC means. (He knows very well that BCE stands for Before the Current Era.) I tell him that it means Before Christ.

And then it hits me.

In spite of all our cultural denials, Jesus’ birth has had a tremendous impact on our entire world. I know that, but how many kids in America today have any idea that it’s true?

I point out to Michael that Jesus’ birth was considered so very important that our entire dating system is based on it. People used to number the years according to when the latest king began to reign, e.g. “In the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel . . .” (1 Kings 15:9). Eventually they realized that it would be helpful to have an ongoing international system. No more turning back to year one every so often. No more using different dates in different countries.

The decision was made to base the calendar on the same idea (the reign of a king), but to set it up so that it could continue until the end of time without ever starting over. Which king could be chosen? Which one’s reign could never be surpassed by anyone else’s? Only the King of kings. Jesus.

The expression on Michael’s face is one of thoughtful relief. He wants to believe. And yet it often appears to him as if Jesus’ birth was something trivial, something only a minor few actually celebrate on Christmas Day.

But here is evidence that that hasn’t always been true. There was a time when many intelligent people regarded the birth of Jesus as the most defining moment in history.

Jesus’ importance

Jesus is far more important to our world than modern Americans are willing to admit. Our young ones need to know that. We educate them in the facts of the faith, as we should. We encourage them to learn the order of the books of the Bible and to read it for themselves, as we should. Some groups teach them apologetics at their youthful level. A great idea.

But eventually every kid realizes that only one small group believes all this. Does it really matter? How important can it be if most people simply ignore it?

Most of our children (and probably many adults) aren’t aware of the numerous ways Jesus’ birth has impacted our world. One profound impact was presented by Philip Yancey in his blog post, from March 25, 2019. (The next four paragraphs are based on that article. All of the following quotes are taken from it. Yancey's blog is no longer available, after being deleted in January 2026.)

In America today, one of the most important values upheld by the dominant culture is concern for the marginalized. Those who can claim to belong to one or more oppressed groups are assumed to have a kind of moral authority, which gives them instant respect. Where did this type of thinking come from?

A French philosopher named René Girard did extensive research and “ultimately traced the phenomenon back to the historical figure of Jesus.” The Son of God not only stood up for the marginalized and oppressed, He actually chose to be born into a poor family in a conquered territory, to live as a homeless adult, and to die an unjust death. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection triggered “the most sweeping historical revolution in the world, namely, the emergence of an empathy for victims.”

In contrast, up to that time most cultures supported “a social order in which the strong have a right to dominate the weak.” “Winners, not losers, wrote ancient history, and the myths from Babylon, Greece, and elsewhere celebrated strong heroes, not pitiable victims.” The Old Testament was the only exception to this rule, with its emphasis on helping the helpless, its willingness to tell the history of a nation’s failures, and its powerful expression of God’s love for those who mess up so badly.

Even apart from His saving grace (which is, of course, the most important message in His Word), Jesus’ birth was important. Jesus’ life was important. Jesus’ death was important. The resurrected Jesus continues to be important. “Today, if you Google indices that measure such values as economic freedom, press freedom, charitable giving, earth care, gender equality, quality of life, human rights, and lack of corruption, you will find that with very few exceptions Christian-heritage nations receive the highest ratings.”

The values that our current cultural elites consider so very important are based entirely on Christian theology. Those values didn’t originate with Jesus’ birth, though. He simply embodied them in a way that no one else had ever done before. The God of the Bible has been the same God for all eternity.

In the Old Testament, He demonstrated and demanded empathy and care for widows, orphans, the poor, immigrants, and anyone else who might be vulnerable to abuse by the powerful. Those commands had a real impact on Jewish life and character.

It wasn’t until the crucifixion, though, when “the victim became a hero by offering himself as a willing victim,” that people were motivated and enabled (with the help of the indwelling Holy Spirit) to do as God has always done. Not perfectly. Not consistently. But for the first time in history, it became a priority for one group (Christians) to care about the weak and the oppressed.

One of the messages our kids are hearing everywhere today is that Jesus and the Bible are trivial and irrelevant, or even dangerous. Maybe one way we can counter that idea is by understanding for ourselves and passing on to them the truth that Jesus is the most important person in history. Jesus’ birth was the most important event in history.

That importance can be seen not just in how we date our calendars, but in the powerful impact for good that still flows from His life today, even among those who don’t believe in Him. Even among those who detest His followers. God is continuing to fulfill His promise to Abraham that all nations will be blessed through his offspring (Genesis 22:18). The one whose birth we celebrate on Christmas Day.

 

 

(This article was edited by the author on February 10, 2026.) 

 

 

I Believe; Help my Unbelief*

Painful doubts

Is there a single Christian on this planet who doesn’t suffer from doubt at least occasionally? I doubt it.

One of the greatest sources of doubt that Western Christians face: The clash between biblical and natural explanations for everything that exists. I struggled with this issue for many years after being saved.

I became a Christian as a freshman in high school. Up to that time, I’d been steeped in the certainty of evolution and the Big Bang. During an open discussion on origins in my eighth-grade science class, a fellow student had had the audacity to suggest that God had created all that we see. My intense, automatic, internal reaction was, “You can’t say that in school!”

As a young Christian, I knew I was supposed to believe in the Genesis account of our beginnings. But evolution made so much sense. There was a convincing logic and a sort of beauty to it. The evidence appeared overwhelming.

Shortly after graduating from college, an agnostic friend asked me point blank whether I believed that God had created all that exists in six days. I had to honestly say that I believed that He could have done it, but I was still uncertain about what had actually happened.

Evidence for creation

Over the next five years or so, God kept confronting me with this question—and with evidence for biblical creation. For the first time, I heard the argument that if humans came into being through evolution, there was no explanation for the Fall. No original sin. No need for Jesus to come and save us. No basis for my faith. That was pretty scary.

Another fact that hadn’t really registered in all my years of reading the Bible: Jesus always spoke about the events in the Old Testament as if they were literally true. Always. For example, when the Pharisees questioned Him about the laws governing divorce, Jesus asked them whether they had read that “at the beginning the Creator made them male and female” (Matthew 19:4). Jesus clearly supported the Genesis account. Who was I to question it?

God sent a brother in Christ to provide a good role model for me. He was an engineer, a critical and logical thinker, and a firm believer in creation. He was rarely able to accept something simply because the Bible says it’s true. He had to wrestle with it, to think it through and examine the evidence. If he could trust God’s Word in this area, maybe I could too.

I attended a class at my church on the case for creation. One night, we watched a video showing fossils with dinosaur and human footprints side by side, followed by an interview with an atheistic scientist who had examined the rocks and was asked for his analysis. After admitting that no animal other than a human being could have left such distinctive footprints, his feeble explanation was that they must be a product of erosion.

Which takes more faith: To believe in the pretty much impossible possibility that wind and water carved out several obviously human footprints in a perfect human stride next to equally clear dinosaur footprints—or to accept the evidence that people and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time? This experience was my first taste of the powerful bias of a supposedly objective scientist when confronted with facts that contradicted his own set views.

The class also addressed a sticky question: Why would God create a universe where it looks like natural processes have been at work over billions of years? Isn’t that deceptive?

They called it “apparent age.” Adam didn’t start out as a single cell. Plants and animals weren’t all seeds and embryos on the first day of their creation. Many of them were fully formed, mature beings. They had apparently passed through all the previous ages and stages.

In the same way, all that exists—rocks, planets, the light coming to us from distant stars—was created instantaneously, but appearing as if it had arisen through natural processes over time. This strategy provides the continuity we need to be able to study God’s creation scientifically.

Eventually, my faith grew strong enough to trust the Bible’s explanation for my existence. And I hope I’ve learned from my own experience to exercise loving patience toward other Christians who are struggling with painful doubts.

God’s goodness

One thing still bugged me, though. Our universe is expanding. The most obvious explanation for that expansion is the Big Bang. Why would God intentionally design a universe with something as seemingly unnecessary as its expansion, something that would undermine faith by pointing to a nonexistent Big Bang? I didn’t like that.

Sometimes God asks us to trust Him. Sometimes He wants us to accept what He says even when we don’t understand it as well as we’d like to. It’s called faith. But sometimes He graciously gives us a glimpse of the answers to our questions.

I was doing research for my last post when He unexpectedly provided one of those answers. All this time, I’d imagined that a stable universe was a real option. I had no idea that God knew better. The truth is that this universe must be expanding at just the right rate or it couldn’t exist.

I could have gone through the rest of my life without learning that fact. After fifty years as a Christian, I’ve reached the point where I can say that I don’t have all the answers, but I know that God does. When something puzzles me, I might face temporary doubts. I might even remain uncomfortable with it for years. But I know deep down inside that He has a perfectly good reason for it. Yet God, in His grace and love and kindness, granted me this opportunity to delight in His design.

Satan is always sending painful questions into my life to try to shake my faith. But God frequently responds with fascinating answers to build it up even more. (For another example, see “The Crucifixion.”)

*Mark 9:24 ESV. One of my favorite verses.

 

In Spirit and in Truth

The importance of truth

Reading through 1 Corinthians 14. Suddenly the overall theme jumps out at me.

I’m a detail person. I usually see every individual tree, rarely the entire forest. For people like me, it doesn’t help that the NIV labels this chapter “Gifts of Prophecy and Tongues.” That might be the content, but it’s not the theme. The main point is the importance of engaging the mind in worship. A significant idea in these days of increasingly valuing the emotional and experiential at the expense of the understanding.

Key verse: “So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind” (vs. 15). (Okay, I admit it. As one who laments the loss of depth in the lyrics of so many contemporary songs, I just had to underline the second half of that verse in my Bible. Years ago.)

Throughout the chapter, Paul is stressing the greater importance of the gifts that lead to a deeper understanding of God’s Word. He in no way denigrates the more “emotional” gifts, as opposed to the more “intellectual” gifts. They’re both gifts of the Holy Spirit. (Yes, I need to hear that.) But he continues to emphasize the superiority of the latter gifts in building up the Body of Christ.

Verses 4 and 5: “He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified.”

Speaking in tongues at that time would be equivalent to the more experiential aspects of worship today. It’s a deep, rich communion with God, a worshiping in spirit. It’s not to be dismissed as an inappropriate emotional expression that has no place in our solemn worship services. (Again, I need to hear and remember this.) We are not to discourage those who seek a more spiritual/emotional/experiential means of expression.

But it is more important to teach (prophesy), to stress the “truth” aspect of worshipping “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Without the truth as a solid foundation, we will always do as we please, we will always go where we desire, we will always stray from God’s design. That’s the way fallen man always operates.

The importance of balance

I find it fascinating that God placed the famous chapter on love right before this chapter on worshiping in truth. He could have put them in completely different books. He could have used two different human authors to write them. He could have put one in the Old Testament and one in the New. But this is how He helps people like me to find a better balance. He placed them side by side.

Not that chapter 13 is all about emotions. Biblical love is not just a gooshy feeling inside that tends to come and go, as our culture understands love. Christian love includes our feelings. The emotional side of love cannot be denied, as I’ve heard some Christians teach. But biblical love is so much greater than other kinds of love. It always results in long-term commitment. It always leads to action in the treatment of others, as described in this passage. Not a legalistic “I must act as though I have patience with her even though she’s wrong.” But an ability to respond to others with a heartfelt patience that naturally springs from the emotion of godly love.

And, of course, that chapter 13 love should flow into chapter 14 worship. Even though Paul stresses the superiority of worshiping in truth, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (13:2).

Worship and suffering

So why do I keep writing here about worship? (See my earlier posts Changing Churches and Sing Unto the Lord a New Song.) What place do these articles have in a blog whose theme is suffering?

The way that we worship reflects the God that we worship. Here’s the message I’ve picked up on in worship services where the greatest emphasis is on the emotional side: God wants and expects everyone to feel good, regardless of what’s happening in their lives. If you’re not smiling, you’re demonstrating a lack of faith. You’re not worshipping, and you’re not pleasing Him. There’s no need to work through your internal issues and struggles. He will instantaneously remove them all as you wave your hands and psych yourself up.

The result? Those who are suffering will live in denial of their pain as they continue to worship this God. Or they’ll walk away from Him after they fail over and over again to work up enough faith to heal the ache inside.

On the other hand, this is the message relayed in services I’ve been in where the truth was stressed at the expense of the spirit: God expects His followers to apply rules for overcoming their hurts without allowing them to pour out their hearts to Him. Get right with Him and everything will be okay. Read your Bible. Pray. Confess and forsake your sins. Go to church. Fellowship with other believers. If that doesn’t work, then do it a little more.

The same result will occur when suffering strikes. Either denial of the pain or walking away from a God who doesn’t seem to care.

But if we worship God in spirit and in truth, the emotional side of our worship will be based on the truth of who God is and what He wants for us. Not a psychological high that ignores the hurts of this world. Not an instant removal of all suffering if we just believe hard enough and smile big enough.

Instead, an understanding of the God of the Bible, who cares deeply for His people and yet uses pain and suffering to grow our faith and to bless the lives that we touch. Our hope and joy will be anchored on the solid ground of His character, as revealed throughout His Word, not just a weekly pumping up that fades away soon after we leave the worship center.

And the intellectual side of our worship will be enriched by the experience of the Holy Spirit moving us to greater joy and hope and compassion, and leading us to greater expressions of heartfelt praise.

The psalmists, whose writings have been used in worship for centuries, freely voice all their needs to God. But they base their expectations and their words on what they know of His character from Israel’s long history of witnessing His actions in their lives. Truth is more important than emotion, but both have a prominent place in God’s Word and in our worship.

Really?

 Questioning God’s Word

    I’m so bad about questioning the Bible. I know it’s the truth, I know God inspired every word, I know He knows what He’s talking about. But too often I read a passage and a little voice in my head says, “That’s not how life really works.”

    It’s just a little doubt, a minor disagreement with God. Is it all that important? Probably. After all, what I’m actually thinking is, “This one brief phrase, this one tiny sentence isn’t true. Even though it’s part of God’s Word, I don’t believe it.” At those times, I’m grateful for the many examples in the Old Testament of how God responded patiently and tenderly to people like Abraham, Moses, David, and Job when they questioned Him.

    My latest issue is with Psalm 145:14-16 (italics added): “The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.”

    Really??? All I have to do is look at the world around me to see that this claim isn’t true.

Taking it too literally

    My basic nature is that of a left-brained nerd. I want to take every word, every verse, every book of the Bible completely literally. So I stumble over passages like this.

    But the Bible isn’t always as literal as many of us (evangelicals in particular) want to believe. Especially certain parts, like the Psalms. When I stop clinging to my own way of thinking and let the Holy Spirit guide me, I realize that maybe this passage is not intended to be an exact description of how the world actually works or a promise that God will always fix whatever's broken. Instead, it might simply be a joyful celebration of God’s generosity and provision, written in hyperbole to emphasize just how amazing and overflowing that generosity is.

    I’ve come across other passages where the Holy Spirit seems to be using hyperbole (an exaggeration of the literal truth in order to emphasize a point or create an effect), rather than stating a fact. When I looked up “hyperbole” in Wikipedia, one of the three examples the article listed was from the Bible. Maybe Wikipedia recognizes nuances in Scripture better than we evangelicals do.

Examining my mental images

    As I’m reading these verses today, something else that helps me to understand them is to reflect on the image they create in my mind. I’m picturing someone who has fallen and is supernaturally set upright on their feet by God. Someone who is bowed down with a heavy weight and whose back is miraculously straightened by our Lord. Complete instantaneous healing.

    But then I remember days when I’ve fallen or been bowed down and remained in that position, and yet, at the same time, felt the upholding and lifting up of the Lord.

    I heard a song a few years ago on a secular radio station. I was in a hard place at the time. A medical issue was messing with my brain, and bad things were happening in my life. When I heard this song, though, I smiled at the refrain, “My head’s underwater, but I’m breathing fine.”*

    I didn’t pay much attention to the rest of the lyrics, but that one line, at that time, kind of summed up what was going on inside of me. My head was underwater. I should have been drowning. I should have been fighting for each breath and finding only water filling my lungs. I should have been panic-stricken, straining to reach the surface in search of oxygen. Instead, I was breathing fine.

    I had fallen on the floor. I was bowed down by the weight of many sorrows. God didn’t set me up on my feet or straighten my back, as I thought this psalm was promising. He didn’t take the pain and the helplessness away. But He elevated and supported my sprawled-out body. He lifted me up in His everlasting arms with my back still bent. He was the reason I could breathe just fine even though my head was underwater.

    Did He follow through on His apparent promise in Psalm 145? Not if I take it in a more literal sense, meaning that he solved all my problems. But spiritually, He went far beyond my expectations and understanding. Although I was still hurting, He upheld me on the inside. He lifted me up into His joy and peace and love. He provided the kind of food that I needed the most—the spiritual, not the physical. He satisfied my deepest desires—to know Him, to walk with Him, to experience His presence.

    Will I remember this lesson when I read other similar passages and that little voice in my head says, “That’s not true!”? Will I keep my perspective and praise God for His compassionate, generous, faithful character even when life is tough?

    Some day, I hope to move on to where I can fully trust Him and take Him at His Word. Not sure that will happen in this lifetime. But I know that through this latest reading of Psalm 145 He’s taken me one more step in that direction.

*by John Legend