Best of It: Conclusion (Part 2)

[Series Index]

The first section in the conclusion to Making the Best of It is called "The Shape of our Lives." John Stackhouse looks at this in terms of three issues.

We can look at the question of the shape of our lives in terms of what we do to shape them, which I will construction; the situation in which we do that construction, which I will call context; and the intermittent, interrupting, and sometimes interesting surprises that occur, which I will call contingencies. And I will look at how we shape our lives in three modes: individuals, home/family, and church. (313)

I'm simply going to hit some points that I found interesting.

Construction

Stackhouse says our lives should reflect God's mission and Christ's call, but we know that because evil is within us, we fail to live up to that purpose. We need to shed those things that impede us. Also, as we make decisions, we need to be asking:

"… How does this help me be who I am supposed to be for Jesus Christ today?" Families and churches can do the same: "How does this way of meeting, this schedule, this activity, this form of decision making, this hierarchy, or this budget help us to be who we are supposed to be for Jesus Christ, today?" (314)

Christian maturity is essential to resisting evil and discerning what will bring shalom. Stackhouse points to one study that concluded:

… the most important factor in producing a mature, well-balanced, and well-integrated Christian faith was not excellent preaching, worship, small-group fellowship, or anything else but adult Christian education. (315)

Yet Christian education is one of church life's most deplorable (IMO) aspects. That said, Stackhouse acknowledges that Christian education alone is not enough. The "holy habits of the normal Christian life, such as prayer, worship, charity, and the like," must be present.

I liked his final paragraph in this section:

Is the goal, then, the perfectly balanced life? Many Christians think it is, and seek the correct ratio of Bible study to prayer to work to leisure to sleep to exercise to … No, the goal is to be whom we are meant to be in order to grow in love for God and do his work in the world. (316)

Context

The challenge for the above is that the context keeps changing. First, we move through various life-cycle stages or go through life seasons. Each season has its limitations and opportunities. Second, our cultural context is always changing. Realism dictates that we shift our posture and actions relative to the context. Our actions in one culture may not be the correct ones in another, and our responses may vary within the same culture in different eras. Shifts in context always combine God's providence and human evil. Thus, the questions in the above section will be shaped by our changing context … but our mission of resisting evil and reshaping the world toward shalom is constant.

Contingencies

Stackhouse writes, "The Book of Acts is full of interruptions." So are our lives. Stackhouse looks at stories in Acts and observes that they are filled with both normal and supra-normal deviations that are hard to separate. Not every interruption is a blessing, but God often does call us to unexpected contingencies.

I liked this passage:

In sum, we can retain the ideal of a balance life, but now in a way radically qualified by our understanding of mission and vocation. Balance in this case is not the balance of a dancer raised on one foot, or even of a spinning top. It is much more dynamic: the balance of a runner traversing a broken-up and heaving landscape. To maintain balance for this step and to prepare well for the next step the runner might well have to lean way off center – to be deliberately off-balance in terms of a snapshot, but properly balanced in terms of a journey. This metaphor thus rules out both the idea of a detailed template in which every Christian life ought to be lived and also the utter confusion in which no option, no matter how extreme, can be judged as wrong. The proof is in the success of the journey. Missteps of either sort – trying to maintain a static, universal ideal or indulging in a capricious impulse – will result in a fall. The question is, does the runner keep running toward the goal?

Realism thus requires a constant renegotiation of changing contexts and contingencies. We both maintain the perpetual elements of any proper Christian living and adapt them to the features of this particular occasion. Such a challenge means that it is not always clear that we are, in fact, making the right choice. Ambiguity cannot be avoided here, either. … What do we do? We make the best of it – in concert with fellow Christians, in cooperation with our other neighbors, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and in discipleship to Jesus Christ, to the glory of God. (320-321)

Amen.

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Best of It: Conclusion (Part 2)

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