Hard Times, Fast Growth
It has been said that, “Hard men make easy times. Easy times make soft men. Soft men make hard times.”
Whatever anyone wants to say about this maxim being over-simplified as to historical cause, there can be no doubt that when we are spoiled, we are less likely to do that which is virtuous and more likely to engage in a complete waste of our time.
We get a sense of this even in the ordinary migraine headache. In the blessings of “first world problems” a migraine can be one of the few whispers of mortality for many people. So one resolves to pray or read the Bible more, or perhaps to be kinder to a sibling or more respectful to mother or father—if only God (through the agency of our aspirin) would make the pain go away. The pain subsides. We join the monastery, or at least sign up for the mission to India.
No, we don’t. In fact, we do not even venture off to read the Bible.
Here is the dirty little secret to our souls. It has a surface, and that is where we tend to swim. In the shallowlands of easy feels and minimal thought, we may be those reeds shaken in the wind that Paul talked about, but that works for us, as we are flexible. The world is before us, and we want to keep our options wide open. Deep roots of commitment to creeds and callings means leaving life as we know it behind. It might even mean being burdened by taking care of others. At the very least, my identity will no longer be a blank canvas to be filled out when I am ready.
The Cocoon Effect
I once heard someone recount how they first learned that you shouldn’t try to help a caterpillar turn into a butterfly any faster than in their own time. I am not an expert on this, so the details are another story for another day. Suffice it to say that there is a struggle in emerging from the chrysalis in which the butterfly develops all of the muscles in its wings. Cocoons are a wise design of the Creator that doubles as a prison cell and a gymnasium. The slightest “assistance” in the jailbreak endangers the creature that is to emerge out of the fight for survival.
Without natural danger, something unnatural results. While self-preservation, ceasing of pain, and care for others are all natural and good, mere comfort is unnatural. That is, the avoidance of the difficulties of emerging from a fallen world are contrary to the way that God has designed the world and the Christian’s life in it. This may be counterintuitive, even to the person attempting serious theology.
Is it not more accurate to say that the original creation is designed by God, but that any dangers of the fallen world are precisely part of the corruption of that design? In one sense that is true. We draw a line between design and distortion. But in another sense, that distinction is the smaller one. While we distinguish between danger and design, we must not divorce them. The fall is a circle of design within the larger circle of the good creation and even better restoration of all things. In fact, the struggle is part of the design.
Paul tells us that, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope” (Rom. 8:20). Without getting into the depths of God’s ordination of all things, for our purposes, we can take from this the lesson that God has ordained even the most difficult things of this life as a refining fire in our sanctification. As he says elsewhere, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom. 5:3-4).
Life in the “cocoon” of a difficult season does not merely produce a kind of nebulous “toughness,” but more specifically it changes us from the inside out. As the caterpillar is “wired” for the traits of a butterfly by a set of information we call DNA, so the soul of the Christian is literally in-formed by the truth that produces all of the traits of the new creation. But that information is designed to do its transformative work under a kind of pressure from this old creation. Interestingly, we derive the English word “metamorphosis” from the Greek word that Paul uses in Romans 12:2 and 2 Corinthians 3:18 which speak of transformation by an action upon our minds.
Discomfort and Reconsideration
Would the vast majority of us have ever picked up a book if we were not forced to? Even of those of us who take delight in learning new things, do we like to be challenged to unlearn things we think we know? Do any of us like to admit we have been wrong? The introduction to many kinds of pain even intensifies this natural reluctance to part with our notions of the most comfortable things. But it is precisely comfort that forms the ground beneath our feet in presumption. An easy view is the enemy of the greater view, and a quick look is never the pathway to genuine insight. The very nature of saving faith and hope make acquaintance with this reality. While the loss of assurance is a bad thing, treated in isolation, the jostling of false assurance is exactly the right medicine in preparation for true gospel assurance. It takes the disturbing displacement of false faith to get us outside ourselves and clinging to Jesus.
We are slow learners and life is short.
That is the link between trials and truths. If peaking our heads into God’s new world were something we naturally took to, then perhaps fewer crosses would be necessary. C. S. Lewis said that, “Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Of course he said that from a less than Reformed perspective, and so there was still an element of God “aiming” with this attention-getter of suffering. Nevertheless it is true about the saints who have been called. That call is precisely to suffering after the pattern of Christ (see 1 Peter 1:21, Romans 8:17, Hebrews 5:8). What he experienced without sin we are to follow, to make a fast break from sin’s delusions.
