Spiritual Art of Penance: for Evangelicals

Penance for Evangelicals. Just as a note, I also posted this baby on my other blogspot: theologywhiplash.blogspot.com

I became aware of the idea of “penance” when I was studying for my 4 year degree. I was in a religion course that made good Evangelicals, like me, aware of other theological systems in Christianity. The idea of penance was almost laughable to me then; I thought of it as trying to earn forgiveness for sins. Every good Evangelical knows that is a stain upon the gospel. Jesus doesn’t require our good works in order to forgive us. Think “Thief on the cross.”

I was very unaware of how little I knew or understood, much less appreciated, theological reflection. I knew the right answers, and they came quick and easy. Such is the life of an inexperienced 19 year old. I thought penance was an old and stupid idea for people who weren’t satisfied with the Gospel truth that Jesus died for all sin, once and for all, and invites all humanity into a relationship with Him; forgiving all sins for those who accept it.

Little did I know, one day I would be pastoring a church. And when you pastor a church, certain truths are not so easy to dismiss or glaze over. To tell the truth, I now firmly believe in penance as a regular spiritual practice for those who have accepted the Gospel.

So what is penance? Is it really trying to earn salvation?

No. Actually, penance has less to do with earning what God is offering to us, and more to do with us accepting what is already there. In its proper place, penance allows us to stop wrestling with our sin, and start wrestling with our forgiveness. It usually is a task given to us by an ecclesial authority, formal or informal. It could be anything from saying prayers, or fasting, or a pilgrimage, or even completing some manual labor that benefits others. The tasks are supposed to be helpful, but mostly they are supposed to give us time to meditate on—and work out—this incredibly great forgiveness and life in Christ that we have been given.

A vignette of penance in the modern evangelical church.

A guy I know and love struggles with sexual addiction. I can tell you that any addiction, but sexual addiction in particular, is a seriously difficult problem to deal with on a spiritual level.

The problem with sexual stuff.

Part of the problem is the root of past sin. My buddy was sexually exploited as a child, and so the normative sexual appetites a man can expect have been broken. He has never experienced sexual normalcy. This is not his own failing. Sin has a way of victimizing people, whether we admit it or not. Furthermore, our culture (more than our churches, in my opinion) makes sexuality a shameful thing; by exploiting its intrigue to sell stuff. Our churches say “sex cements” (and they mean that it’s proper place is to bond people and lives together in the sacredness of marriage), but our culture says, “sex sells.”

My buddy had been thrown into a world where he had been sold… yes… but he had been unwillingly and unwittingly cemented to deep shame and reproach. The work of being set free by Jesus Christ is just that: work. And while I do believe we should shy away from any boasting that salvation can be earned; I think we, the evangelical church, have forgotten to work that salvation out.

And so, sadly, my buddy got virtually no help from his Christian community. Pastors seemed to only have one line, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved.” His response was always, “I believe! But this sin is killing me!” The pastor could offer no other help. And when my buddy’s sin problem became an embarrassment to the church, he stopped receiving even that one line. Pastors seemed to say to him, “If one time forgiveness doesn’t work, you got to change. If you can’t change, then you need better help than I can give. Here’s the number to a good counselor that I know.” No offense to all my friends in the world of counseling and psycho-analytics; but I think we pastors have forgotten an age old pastoral tradition: penance.

So I invited my buddy on a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is simple, you just walk with each other all day, for days on end. I asked each participant (Wait. No. no. Let’s call them “pilgrims,” shall we?) to identify spiritual goals that God was inviting them too. The goals were different for each pilgrim. One wanted to find God’s peace, another wanted to find spiritual strength, a non-Christian came to see what Christians were like while walking together, and of course, one man wanted to be set free from his sexual addiction.

And so we started each day with a meditation on Psalm 1, and Genesis 15. Then we walked, and walked and walked. We ended each day with a small fire, and another meditation. Then we’d get up and do it again. We prayed that every mile would get us closer to grasping God’s work in our lives, ever step a victorious step in sanctification, and every mountain an opportunity to struggle towards God.

I spent time with each pilgrim, as time allowed, praying for them, and talking through whatever God was doing in their lives.

“Rev. Shivers just went up my spine. Maybe God is going to set me free. Maybe this trip is going to allow me to finally lay down this burden.” My buddy said to me.

“Well, let’s walk it out. And pray.”

If the story ended with me telling you that the pilgrimage was a great one-time cure for my buddy, and that convinced you to try it out; you would be missing the whole point of this article.

The miraculous healing we wanted is not what God gave. Penance is never about manipulating God into doing what we want. But penance, in and of itself, is a grace that God gives to us to work out our salvation. That pilgrimage, for all intents and purposes, is the temporal answer to our struggle with God’s great salvation: Christians walking with each other, praying for each other, encouraging each other, and trusting God to do the work.

As such, the evangelical model of penance promotes the very antidote that Jesus established for serious, addictive, soul-crushing sin: A Christian community that continually (and oftentimes physically) brings one another to the Great Regenerator of Humanity—Jesus Christ.

This is how we get better. We walk it out with one another. The spiritual discipline of penance demands that the evangelical response to sin is not only, “That’s between you and God. Pray this prayer and you should be good.” But also, “Welcome to the inheritance of the saints! You belong here, and your struggle with sin does not disqualify you. We want to be reconciled to God, which while we still walk this Earth, is a never ending process we help each other with.”

Conclusion: The Girl On The Train, and Goodness vs. Greatness

Fast, furious, and as devoid of spoilers as I can manage: though it hung up slightly for me in the middle, and the strength of its characters waned just slightly (the "kidnapping" scene specifically), The Girl on the Train turned out to be a fun ride with a few good twists along the way. The parallels to Gillian Flynn are merited, not undesirably. On "Palmer's Scale of 1-10", I'd give it a solid 6 - better than the average novel, but short of greatness. Some will disagree with me here: it is, in fact, well written, with finely crafted story elements, honed structure, and satisfying in the heroic journeys of its characters. 

I wouldn't argue with that rebuttal. It is on par with other first novels by several authors I enjoy - Peter Heller's Dog Stars, Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore, Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, and Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, for example. My argument is only that it lacked a certain quality to elevate it from simply "entertaining" to some transcendent form of reading, which few books actually achieve. 

I theorize that it's hard to get a sense of the greatness in a book until I read more from an author. It takes time with them, and developing a relationship of sorts to understand their experience and worldview. Perhaps they need a period of getting comfortable in writing before they achieve it. Let's use David Mitchell as an example. Cloud Atlas is perhaps his finest novel, made deeper and richer through reading his first novels, and the ones which follow it, even when they don't achieve a similar greatness (or maybe, especially because of it). Why? Because I have more context for David Mitchell. I begin to understand how he got to Cloud Atlas, and where it has taken him since.

There's a line in Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, which the protagonist states firmly that he will not read any author which has not been dead for 20 years. It is a curious statement which stands out from the rest of the narrative. There is no expressed conclusion to draw from it, and certainly Murakami was not endorsing the opinion by voicing it (he wants us to read his books today, not in 20 years). Nevertheless, I've thought a lot about that quote. The quote is really about selecting books to read that have been set apart by time, truth and authenticity: meaningful contact with readers across the dimension of time, how much the human experience rings true, and to what degree the author projects his own thoughts and feelings into it. By conclusion, he is making a statement as to what defines greatness in a book, and also making a qualitative judgment that we cannot determine it while the author is still living. 

No publisher wants to sell that book from a living author which will not be popular yet for many years. I have read a lot about the publishing market being over-saturated. There are still plenty of digital-era readers out there, but there are also a lot of books. Because there are a lot of books, authors must write with the broadest appeal possible so that their publishers make money, and the authors can continue to write. Only reputed authors have much freedom with their material, and then with a pseudonym if deemed too divergent. If Oprah endorses that book, or a blockbuster trilogy (or maybe quadrilogy!) is based on their series, the author has really hit it big, and achieved a different sort of "greatness", a financial one. So an aspiring writer is incentivized to write in such a way if they want a chance at achieving popular greatness. Experience tells us that said author need not even write great books, or even good ones (I'm looking at you, Divergence, Mockingbird, and Twilight). Good screenwriting/acting/directing/CGI can overcome bad books to make good movies for the sake of selling more of them. 

For better or worse, this is the world we live in. Writers must write, and publishers must publish accordingly, to minimize risks and make money. Cloud Atlas, in this sense, is an obscure Wachowski film that failed to make much money. The Girl on the Train should be viewed as a product of our time: it is a good book which has achieved commercial (and perhaps momentary) greatness. Dreamworks has already acquired the rights to film it. And it is a good enough story that I would watch the film, as well as read more of Hawkins. Underneath it all, however, is a lingering feeling that there is greatness waiting still for the one who would boldly write transcendent truth with authenticity.

A First Impression of The Girl on the Train

I'm a sucker for unreliable narrators. Yes, they're a bit of a liability, knowing that through the words on the page, they are subverting my thoughts and emotions for some future use, yet I read/watch on, either to be thrilled or disapppointed at the end: thrilled for the truth about human experience they reveal (ex. Memento, The Great Gatsby, The Blind Assassin), or disappointment for failing to expose it, by lack of resolution (The Catcher in the Rye) or the author's abuse of the technique. Unfortunately, most works fall into the latter category.

The Girl on the Train, a first novel by Paula Hawkins, is unique in that it has not just one but two unreliable narrators, Rachel and Megan, young women whose lives are apparently separate but will become increasingly similar, intertwined and complicated as the plot goes on. I am partially finished (23%, with 2.5 hours of reading to go, according to my Kindle), but pleased so far with the author's execution in its characters and literary technique (Editing note: I am told that there will be a third narrator, more on this to follow in my final review).

The two narrators, Rachel and Megan, are both unreliable in the sense that they are flawed and broken people, grappling with the consequences of their questionable judgments and decisions, carried out in their everyday actions. Rachel is a despondent alcoholic and jobless divorcee who (according to her) commutes on the train to London daily as part of an elaborate ruse to show her flatmate she is still employed. Her inebriated thoughts are laid bare for the reader in the mornings and evenings, as she passes by her old neighborhood, the home of her ex-husband (now remarried and with a child), and the home of a younger couple, who she names "Jess" and "Jason". Rachel is a sort of outside observer, seeing their lives unfold through glimpses in their window, fleeting moments at a time. Rachel imagines this as the life she could have had, experiencing pleasure at their joyful moments and simultaneous shame and guilt for failing to achieve this in her own life.

"Jess", as it turns out, is actually Megan, and her life is revealed to be somewhat different than Rachel imagines it. Megan is emotionally unsettled by her past, unhappy with her present marriage to "Jason" (Scott), and soon starts an extramarital affair with her psychologist. Her story, while more anchored in reality, still leaves the reader suspicious of what is about to come.

Scene One is set; insert Rachel's chance discovery of "Jess" kissing another man, one binge-fueled night Rachel cannot remember, a missing Megan, and we have ourselves a story. Hawkins has established an intriguing mystery that truly engages the reader with just the right amount of the right words to reveal what is happening, and we get the impression that every single sentence has been carefully crafted, to great effect in the reader's mind. It is carefully balanced between achieving intrigue by not telling the reader, and enough revelation of character and plot to keep the reader interested. While it deals with explicit material, it does not do so in an explicit way. The reading experience is not altogether different than how I felt reading Gone Girl, and I suppose that many will compare Hawkins to Gillian Flynn's works.

There is foreshadowing, metaphor, theme, and symbolism in abundance that I have not observed here, but I will reserve these judgments for when I have finished the book and had more time to digest what Hawkins has presented to us. Suffice it to say, however, that it is a pleasurable reading experience thus far, and I am interested to see how these characters grapple with the consequences of their choices, and what twists the plot takes. At this point, I'm along for the ride.

In my world, the discussion of truth, or Truth, is all part of the job. I discuss my truth, your truth, and occasionally the truth.

Most fun, for me, is to talk about ontological truth. Ontological truth, in my meaning, is free of needing any foundational argument laid out before it in order for the ontological truth to be… well… true.

Quick example: God is love. That’s an ontological truth. I used this ontological truth in my time in Iraq. I had many candid conversations with Muslim people, and we would talk about God. I have often been asked the question, “Is Allah the same as the Christian God?” And the truth can be worked backwards from our ontological truth. Hang with me.

The God I worship, no matter by what name I call Him, is love. So, it stands to reason that the God a Muslim worships, no matter what name they call Him by, could certainly be the same God that I worship. If, and it’s a big if, that God is love. Certainly the case works with my own Christian brothers and sisters as well. It doesn't matter how similar our worship is, or our names for God. If they are worshiping something other than Love—we cannot be worshiping the same God.

So a friend of mine told me that he stopped believing in Jesus. Our conversation went something like this:

Him, “I don’t believe in Jesus anymore. I don’t believe in the Church. I certainly don’t believe that all this theology that I was taught growing up.”

Me, “Interesting. Tell me, do you love your wife, or hate her.”

“What? I love her. What do you mean?”

“So you believe in love over hate. Love is good. Hate is bad.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“So you believe in love, forgiveness, self-sacrifice for your neighbor, and all that is good?”

“Of course. I just don’t believe in Jesus. And you don’t need to believe in Jesus to believe in love. And you’re not going to catch me in some kind of trap here.”

Me, “No, no. Of course not. You are much too smart for that. But you say you don’t believe in Jesus, but you do believe in love. You don’t believe in Jesus, but you do believe in truth. And for me, Jesus is those qualities—the very embodiment. So, whatever you think Jesus is, and reject; I probably think that’s good of you. The qualities that you still believe in are actually the very essence of Jesus.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Me, “Yeah, you do. Let me try it again. Suppose you really liked fresh milk. You drink fresh milk, and find a brand of milk in the grocery store that is called ‘Fresh Milk.’ You buy a gallon of that ‘Fresh Milk’ milk, and when you get home you pour yourself a nice, tall glass. You drink it, and immediately you spit it out. It’s rotten. The ‘Fresh Milk’ milk is actually spoiled milk. You wouldn't then change your mind, and say: I actually don’t like fresh milk. You would laugh at the ‘Fresh Milk’ brand you bought and never buy it again; because it is not fresh milk, no matter what the brand says.”

Him, “Umm… maybe.”

End of conversation.

There are some pretty cool ontological truths that I am aware of; and their uses in my profession are myriad. I just gave you the first one, “God is Love.” The second I will give you is much like it, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

In churches especially, we are prone to be led to believe that something is from God when it actually is not. Sometimes you don’t need a deep meditation on what is from God and what is not. We have some ontological truths given to us in Scripture that are an easy standard to judge against. I don’t care what the preacher says, if the “movement” of God is creating hate, bitterness, unrest, impatience, spitefulness, self-centeredness, faithlessness, harshness, or indulgence; the thing cannot be from God.

Lastly, let me bring it on home. I counsel people in spiritual matters quite a lot. It’s part of my job. I get, “how do I know if this is from God?” quite a lot. You would be amazed at how many people don’t take who God is into account. For them, the question is a Pandora’s box, and best left to a spiritual expert to answer.

So, and this is the wild ending coming way out from left field, if you want to know what God is up to, or what He may have in store for you, or what His will might be, or if you have a destiny with Him, or what you should do in a given scenario: embrace and practice those things that God is. Love.

On the Reading of Old Books - A.M. Bigler
"It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between...Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes." - C.S. Lewis, "On the Reading of Old Books"

Is it a good rule, as Lewis proposes, to deliberately intermix new books with old? It depends. Perhaps we all do this on some level below conscious choosing - I myself have layered Joyce, Chandler, Le Carre, Fitzgerald or Hemingway with contemporaries such as Mitchell, Murakami and McCarthy without entirely intending it.

Curiously, while I am markedly deliberate about the books I choose, I am also constrained by my subconscious; that is to say, sometimes I find a book plucked from the queue deliberately to be one which I did not intend, and I cannot explain my rationale for choosing it. This when I had better reasons to pick differently - a newer, which I have thought about recently, or an author which I am already familiar with. Perhaps you may relate. 

Sven Birkerts may point to an answer in his observation of bookstore customers: "I see them standing in place with their necks tilted at a 45-degree angle, looking not for a specific book, but for a book they can trust to do the job. They want plot and character, sure, but what they really want is a vehicle that will bear them off to the reading state."(The Christian Imagination, p. 239). Is my subconscious seeking this on a level I cannot comprehend? This is a mystery to me.

A confession: When I first read Lewis' quote, I perceived that "old" and "new" implied whether the reader had already visited these works. Where Lewis had meant chronological to the world, I perceived as chronological to me. My first reaction to this quote was a twinge of guilt. If C.S. Lewis, a hero of mine, re-reads books with that frequency, why is it that I rarely do so? (With the exception of the Bible, only 1-2 books out of 50-70 are re-reads for me). Does that imply something negative about my reading habits (i.e. that I am "hooked" on a first experience, or too lazy to pull more out of what I read)? I could not adequately answer this question.

My second impression, which followed from a realization what he actually meant (albeit after longer delay than I am comfortable admitting), was relief. Of course, Lewis did not intend when he wrote that to inflict guilt and shame upon me. But was there something to why I felt the way I did when I perceived wrongly? Is it possible (and right) that we should re-visit a place on our literary journey, perhaps many places, with great frequency, and that this has meaning or value to us?

It is true that my first reading of a book "can become a blur to me soon after I've finished it", as Birkerts observes (p.230), and that I read a thing the first time for the pleasure of it, not seeking to draw much meaning, unless it comes to me much later through reflection and digestion (ex. The Grand Inquisitor passage of Brothers Karamazov). It is also true that I feel differently about a book when revisited, for better or worse, and often both. 

Why? Perhaps I become more conscious of the themes, or increase in my awareness of the creator's mental state. Perhaps I fear (rightfully) that some of the magic which induced my lucid state of pleasure will be absent, or at the very least, altered. Perhaps it is different because I am further down the road than before, and it no longer relates to my experience and thoughts as it did before. At the very least, it shifts my view of things: some books become valuable for my memory of reading them, and very few do not slip a bit in my fondness for them. 

For me, Starship Troopers is an example of the former, and Lord of the Rings, the latter. When I revisit the former, I see a moment in time: I am 21, learning new ideas about the world and shaping my thoughts on life. The book was life-altering at the time, but now it has little newness or added meaning to me, except for recollection of this memory. Lord of the Rings, though tedious at times, and while not nearly as bonding in first experience, has only grown in depth and meaning across different snapshots in my life. Where in one re-read I might be drawn to Frodo's peril, in another I find myself reflecting on quite a different aspect of Aragorn's admirable qualities.

Whether we like to admit it or not, the same is true of film, television, art, music, poetry, or any created thing of human hands. Since few works capture our imagination the same way the second time, we sometimes shy away from seeing them again, for fear that they should take on a different or lesser meaning to us, imprisoned in the original ways we have perceived them. My refrain from revisiting Cloud Atlas might be an example of this for me. 

The truth is that few books, films, etc. ever reach the pinnacle of greatness that morph and take on new meaning with every experience. Cautiously, I would put The Brothers Karamazov, Great Gatsby, and For Whom the Bell Tolls into this category. I have heard that Moby Dick speaks to a new decade in every reader's life, though I have yet to be tempted by a second read of it.

Perhaps this nature of books is not so bad: whether we find ourselves embarking upon a new journey, or reflecting upon an old one, one which has brought us from where we were before to where we are now, and point to where we are going, we can appreciate these old books for what they are: a pile of stones, a memory, marking the crossing of the Jordan. It is natural and intended that we should revisit them from time to time, even if our view of the rocks themselves loses the magic of the moment.

Post-script: A word of caution. It is equally fraught with peril that we should stay too long in these places, dwelling on the past like Uncle Rico's football days. In the end, it is with a balanced and proper view of things that we learn to honor God's presence in our past, the work he was doing, what he continues to do in the present through his grace, and give us hope for the future as characters in his grand narrative.