Meditation on Contentment

 "I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:11-13

There is a common sentiment today that says that contentment is being at peace with who you, but not necessarily with your circumstances or experiences. Accept yourself, but don't accept your station in life. Be okay with who you are, but don't be okay with where you are. Is it possible that these people have it exactly inverted? Could it be that contentment is accepting where you are, but not who you are? Could it be that true contentment is being at peace with your life circumstances, but never being at peace with who you are--that is, your state of moral, intellectual, relational and emotional development? Could it be that this notion of accepting ourselves is yet another example of the culture's runaway narcissism?

It seems to me that the only contentment available to the Christian as it relates to the self is total confidence in Christ and no confidence in the self. I am at peace with who I am only insofar as I am assured that Christ's perfection is granted graciously to me by his singular work in my behalf. Were it not for this assurance, there could be no peace, no quietude of mind and soul, about my desperate condition. This other, and obviously worldly, confidence begins with a sinful person's generous and illusory appraisal of himself. Given enough time, he deceives even himself about his standing. He may still affirm the need to learn French for life enrichment purposes, but when it comes to his moral condition and the condition his personality--the core of who he is--he is quite sure that he is as finished as he ever need be.

The odd thing about this worldly contentment is that it thrives off the inherently counter-intuitive claim that I am "okay the way I am." The reason I call this inherently counter-intuitive is because of the testimony of Romans 1. We are without excuse. We all know that we have not arrived--that indeed there is perhaps a lifetime of moral development ahead for us, and we even suspect that a lifetime of development will not necessarily do much to make us appreciably better people than we were before. But surely in our hearts we know that while this may be true, it cannot be okay. How can one be content (in the sense of accepting and being at peace) with deeply broken humanity? As the introductory passage indicates, the apostle Paul said that he had learned to be content in all circumstances; not that he was content with himself.

But the contented modern narcissist is okay with who she is! She pretends that this stagnation of the self is wholly acceptable; that it is just "who she is." Her soul no longer needs to be in motion towards some truer moral center, for everything now orbits her. She has "suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness" by denying the testimony of her conscience that she is not "okay the way she is." She is changeless, and now it is her expectation that the universe change to suit her needs. Her activity is not towards some higher goal or principle or God. Her activity is towards an endless dance of the new; new experiences, new conquests, new emotions, new companions, new purchases, new gods even. In short, her soul is motionless while all spins around her. She has become the center of her own universe.

But there are those whose lives have little external stimulation, but whose souls are furious cauldrons of constant creative activity. I think of Lewis' description of his life as one lived "in dark rooms with endless dusty books." He was silent. He was alone. And yet all the silences and all the spaces were filled to overflowing with magic and near suffocating wonder. These are people who listen to God in the stillness, and because of it they can find no circumstance that is richer than the stillness. And because of it they restlessly pursue the One who changes them at every encounter. God has met them in their simple worlds, and because of it they are in a state of metamorphosis. Others sense the lifelessness of their own souls, and so they work at filling the externals with endless variety.

Consider Paul, boasting of the joy of Christ in poverty and prison while there are so many bored and disillusioned rich people all over our world. No one would call these people idle, but that is precisely what they are in the most important ways. Their "acceptance of self" (their brand of contentment) is little more than metastasized idleness. In all of their busyness, they are vacuous people. Their days are filled and their souls are empty.

Here is another way to think of this. Are you ready to die, even if you are relatively young? The worldly man who defines contentment as peace with self but not peace with the externals will never be ready to die! There is always a new experience, always a beach in Italy that was missed, always a new way to fill the yawning and itching boredom.

But if one possesses an eternal perspective in which Christ burns so brightly that all other worldly pleasures lose their vibrancy in comparison, then one can say truly that one is ready. The man or woman of contented faith in Christ is not ready for death out of some sense of perverse self-abnegation or lack of ambition. It is not that those content in Christ are sad and empty and that is why death seems appropriate. It is quite the opposite. What has life on this earth failed to provide? It gave Christ and the promise of new life, and that is enough.

Perhaps that phrase captures the essence of contentment. Is it enough? Is your life circumstance, which is filled to overflowing with Christ, enough? Is what has been provided for you in Christ enough? You may not be enough as you are, but you know that you are "hidden in Christ," and He is most certainly enough. Do you believe that He is enough to make you enough for God? And do you know that every resource of the eternal sovereign has been pledged to make you whole? Is that enough? Is the promise of heaven enough? Or must one have another trip, or thrill, or another thing to be whole?

Again, The Problem is the Philosophy

Christians are up in arms about the Transgender bathroom problem, and they should be. But the problem is the secularist philosophy that gave rise to this new sexual revolution. The odd thing is that many of these Christians now upset about the transgender issue had no problem with the legalization of gay marriage. They have nothing to do with each other, right?

The first sexual revolution was about women's rights, to vote, to work for equal pay, to be treated with respect. This new sexual revolution seeks to end the notions of male and female altogether. The first sexual revolution fought for the dignity of women; this new revolution would wholly obscure the meaning of womanhood altogether.

The country's runaway secularism can only lead down this path. When the view of reality is that we are ultimately purposeless convulsions of matter, then there will clearly be no changeless personal ground for any ethical sentiment. In other words, when the vision for a society informed by an unchanging ethic is lost, one is left to look to secularist visions of the morally evolving society. We are now far too evolved, far too forward-thinking, to accept the defining strictures of some ancient religion. In its place, or perhaps (to be more dramatic) upon its ashes, we erect the enlightened secular state, either right or left.

In such a state, human reason determines all. But human reason, lest we forget, gave us the gulags. It gave us Hitler. It gave us the French Revolution. It gave us its most cherished offspring: Utilitarianism. It gave us war upon war and compromise upon compromise. It gives us fragmentation.

Douglas Wilson was precisely right on this. If one holds that matter is infinitely malleable, then that view of reality translates downstream in one's ethical practice. If nature can provide us various permutations of matter, with no particular plan or purpose, then surely we can impose our subjective plans or purposes upon matter, and the mindless universe is not going to put up any resistance. We can make ourselves to be man or woman, god or animal, one or three. If in fact nature is infinitely malleable, and nature makes no preferences, then of course I can treat it as such. I can define and redefine various phenomena, such as the "one man, one vote" concept. Perhaps I determine that some men are more intelligent and ought to be given two votes. Or, to be more respectful of current societal norms, we can call it the "one womyn (one who presents as a woman), two votes" principle. If any minority feels discriminated against, then they should merely identify as the prevailing cultural class, and insist on being treated as such. If one can identify as man or woman, then surely groups can identify as minority or majority, depending on the need of the moment.

Of course the enlightened secularist worth his salt knows that I am arguing in something of a circle. Even if the Bible should become the source of societal cohesion, it still must be understood by reason, and so reason is still the foundation, or so it is claimed. But while that seems a "gotcha" moment, it is not the whole story. It is true that I am guilty of circularity, but the secularist has it wrong about the center of the circle. I grant that I am guilty of circularity, but I affirm a divine circularity. That is to say, I believe that God's reasoning through His Word (The Logos) and His active Spirit in His Church provide a clear and unifying set of propositions sufficient for the moral guidance of the whole world. If we have a disagreement, I say that the Bible as interpreted by Spirit filled believers will find core agreement. That is a circularity, but it is preferable, and far more successful at escaping the death trap of relativism, than the secularists circularity of human reason. He says human reason will provide the answers, but then we are led to endless parsing, endless quarreling, which he says will be solved again by human reason, which turns out to be mere force in the end. To find proof of this one only needs to look to the long history of the dictatorship of human reason. After all, the gulags were indeed quite persuasive.

In short, both sides argue in a circle, but my circle is a centrifugal and gravitationally ordering phenomenon while his circle is solipsistic and suffocating in its ultimate subjectivity. My circle grabs hold of the world to set unity and diversity in tension. His circle grabs hold of everything, a black hole collapsing all things and leaving a cosmic wasteland in its wake. The mind of God can only give rise to a symphony; the mind of man cut off from God can only give rise to cacophony.

Gay marriage, gender atomism and transgender bathroom policies all are notes in the crescendo of the cacophony.