Russell A. Cardwell Online

We focus so much of our attention on the things that make a visible difference, and the maintenance things tend to get squeezed out. As someone said, “Something has to give, somewhere.” And usually it’s the things that don’t provide immediate payoff.

I remember a house my dad bought when I was a kid. He had found it abandoned. The house had been framed, but the deal had fallen through and construction stopped. The skeleton of the home and stood for several months and because the builder had so much sunk cost in it, he was eager to get it off his hands. My dad got the house for a fraction of what it was worth and had it finished.

I remember that he didn’t like the way they were insulating it. He had a load of insulation delivered and spent a weekend putting insulation up himself. I spent part of a weekend over there helping. I was about 13 or 14 at the time. Like most kids that age, I was smarter than anyone else. I thought the insulation stuffing was sheer idiocy. Why waste all the time and money on this insulation? You’re not even going to be able to see it. His explanation didn’t register with me. If you get too hot, just turn the air-conditioner up. I couldn’t see the point.

If you built a house and left out the sheet rock it would be immediately obvious. It would make a visible difference at once. But if you skimped on the insulation it would not be obvious right away. And once the walls were in place and painted, adding more insulation would take major surgery. They only time to insulate is before the walls are up, long before the insulation will be needed.

This is what is wrong with our busy lives. We concentrate on things that have immediate effects. We focus on what yields visible results right now, and the things that don’t show get squeezed out of the schedule. But those things often make a huge difference over time.

At work, a few months ago, I spent about a week going through the bins, pulling out all the materials, sorting, eliminating tons of it—materials of limited use, old, outdated stuff—counting and measuring all that was left and reconciling the inventory, modifying the storage bins to keep materials better sorted, and reorganizing the arrangement of it all. I had been putting the job off for a long time, because it wad so time-consuming. But the outcome has been that it is much easier to find and store materials, and to maintain inventory. The inventory is more accurate. I know right where everything is. They don’t get jumbled up together, or damaged because they are better supported. In just a few months, I have already saved the time I spent reorganizing.

When I am organizing, sorting, preparing, culling, etc., I don’t feel like I’m being productive. I am a light switch: I’m either all the way on, or all the way off. I’m not a dimmer. And all that routine maintenance stuff feels like wasted time to me. I’m champing at the bit to be out the gate and down the straightaway. I need to reeducate myself to the truth that those activities are productive. The payoff is not immediate, but they yield immense dividends over time.

Famed Polish pianist, composer, patriot, and statesman, Ignacy Paderewski said: “If I don’t practice for one day, I know it; if I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it; if I don’t practice for three days, the audience knows it.”

Last week a friend wrote me with a prayer request, saying, “I am trying to stay focused on Bible study every day and keeping up with my prayer life. I am so worn out at the end of every day I sometimes let it slip and I should not.” Then this morning another friend whom I met for breakfast was talking about how much he liked everything to be orderly, but that his life and environment doesn’t reflect that. He said his wife told him it was because he was over-committed. He didn’t set aside time for those things. He agreed to do so many things, and felt like he had plenty of time for them, because he had not accounted for the time it takes to do routine maintenance. (After breakfast, we stopped to look at a house he was building; thus the inspiration for this meditation.)

One of them suffers from neglecting routine maintenance of his physical environment, the other from neglecting routine maintenance of her spiritual environment. In both cases the cause is the same: focusing on the things that payoff now, and squeezing out the things that yield long-term results. I am often guilty of both. My environmental maintenance routines are atrocious. (Translate: I am a slob.) I have finally developed a study and prayer routine that is comfortable. If I don’t do it, my day doesn’t feel right. It’s like going to bed without brushing your teeth. Yucky. Nevertheless, I expect to do more as I work myself up to it. I am a long way from the kind of discipline I would like to have.

In my early 20’s I had a friend who owned a vintage European sportster—basically a high-performance race car. It was awesome to ride in that thing, winding through the Hill Country west of Austin with the top down. But the car required constant maintenance. The timing, the carburetor, the spark plugs—it seemed practically everything had to be adjusted almost every day. Without maintenance it quickly became a coughing, rattling heap. But when the maintenance was done right, it purred and it roared like the cat it was named for. Sheer ecstasy! So with our lives.

It would be nice if I had some pithy remarks about diligence and discipline here to wrap all this up and tie it neatly with a bow. This is a rambling narrative that aims at its subject from several directions, and never really closes in on it. Still, it’s the meditation of my mind today. It’s kind of messy, like my life. But I got it done.

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More on the subject of persecution. This comes from the iWorship Daily Devotional Bible:

“In Peru, Christians don’t expect to get something for serving Jesus,” said Pastor Zapata. “They expect to give something.” To illustrate, Pastor Zapata showed his foreign guests a row of white crosses, each representing a local Christian killed by Communist insurgents. As if that wasn’t proof enough, inside Pastor Zapata’s village home was the body of another pastor who had been killed by guerrillas the night before. Expressing their grief, members of the dead man’s family ringed his body where it lay covered with a blanket.

Outside, though, the scene was joyous. Despite a steady rain, the congregation of the murdered pastor were singing praise choruses. Guerrillas had killed their pastor, destroyed their church building, and burned many of their homes, yet they sang praise to God. They were still at risk from the guerrillas, but they magnified the Father anyway.

These believers, and countless others whose stories are shared through the Voice of the Martyrs, had learned the lesson that Isaiah taught: Trusting in God is never the wrong choice. He is the eternal Rock to whom we can cling in life and in death—we trust in him always.

Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.
—Isaiah 26:4

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It was the Fourth of July and I was invited to a “Christian patriotic” event. I came away rather disturbed by it. What I heard was a lot of angry rhetoric aimed at non-Christians. It was not a mob scene or anything extreme. And while some of it was over the top, I’ve heard much worse. But it was clearly an angry crowd. If I were a first time visitor I would definitely not be back to that church. I’m not attracted to angry people. Why would I want to become a Christian if it means becoming bitter and angry at the world?

It seems the loudest voices in Christianity for several decades have been angry ones. I hear this angry rhetoric all the time: people railing against scientists and against educators; against politicians, judges, lawyers, doctors; against foreigners and immigrants, legal or illegal, and so on. The list seems endless. It should come as no surprise that Christians are viewed as hostile and judgmental.

This particular event was not a big deal, except that it connected with several other things. A couple of weeks ago, I had to listen to someone telling me about the “secret homosexual conspiracy to destroy America”. My natural reaction is to say, “Oh, come on. What kind of fool to do take me for?” Except that there seem to be hordes of people prepared to believe a great many foolish things. I can’t remember a time when a secret conspiracy of baby-eating Satanists or communist lesbians or some other nefarious out-group wasn’t trying to destroy America. Conspiracy theories are as old as time, or at least as old as our desire to blame our problems on some out-group so as to avoid looking too closely at ourselves. (See Leviticus 16:5-10, for a description of the Hebrew ritual of placing all the sins of the people upon a scapegoat and driving it out into the wilderness.)

This morning I read an interview in Outreach with a woman who has a lot of spiritual concerns and has been trying on the Christian God in her mind to see if it fits. She sees herself as a spiritual seeker, but she is not comfortable sharing that with others, especially Christians, because Christians are so hostile and judgmental.

My point is, is this part of the answer to my perennial question: Why is the church not working for so many people? Is this one more part of the answer to the question: Why is the body of Christ continuing to shrink in this country? To be sure, I can sympathize with these church men and women. Culture has changed so much in their lifetime that they hardly recognize it. They don’t understand the world they live in, they see their way of life slipping away, and they feel threatened. So they fight back. It is the most natural thing in the world. And therein lies the problem: it is the natural thing to do . . . the worldly thing. . .

Jesus talked about this. “If you love only those who love you, what good is that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?” (Matthew 5:46-47) Was he just speaking metaphorically, and didn’t really mean what he was saying? Did he not intend us to actually do that? If not, why did he say the same thing so many times in so many different ways? Love your enemies occurs so many times in his teachings that it seems to be a primary theme. And it was no pie-in-the-sky platitude either. Rather, it was a practical, sure-fire method for converting your enemies into friends. As Paul put it,

If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

—Romans 12:20

This is the way Christianity overcame the Roman Empire. Watching as members of this small persecuted group boldly professed their faith in the face of brutal public torture and execution won thousands of converts to the early church. To the worldly and cynical denizens of the Roman world, the question was: what kind of God could produce such faith, such conviction, such heroism? Certainly no god they knew could inspire such loyalty. These people marched joyfully, victoriously into the arena. It was unthinkable! Read St. Ignatius’s letter to the Romans, and the Prison Diary of Perpetua. Far from fighting back, these martyrs set such an example that their new religion spread like wildfire.

Our culture today is much like that of the Roman Empire in which the early church emerged. Christianity succeeded largely because these early Christians fixed their eyes on Jesus, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross.” (Hebrews 12:2) We have come full circle and live in a culture more like Rome than any since the days of the Caesars. Shouldn’t the successful church be responding as did these early Christians?

Here are some quotes from 20th Century theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from The Cost of Discipleship:

To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ. When it comes, it is not an accident, but a necessity.

If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity.

Every Christian has his own cross waiting for him, a cross destined and appointed by God. Each must endure his allotted share of suffering and rejection.

When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.

Jesus’ summons to the rich young man was calling him to die, because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die.

Suffering then is the badge of true discipleship. The disciple is not above his master.

If we refuse to take up our cross and submit to suffering and rejection at the hands of men, we forfeit our fellowship with Christ and have ceased to follow Him. But if we lose our lives in His service and carry out cross, we shall find our lives again in the fellowship of the cross with Christ.

To bear the cross proves to be the only way of triumphing over suffering.
Every man is called separately, and must follow alone. But men are frightened of solitude, and try to protect themselves from it by merging themselves in the society of their fellow-men and in their material environment. They become suddenly aware of their responsibilities and duties, and are loath to part with them. But all this is only a cloak to protect them from having to make a decision. They are unwilling to stand alone before Jesus and to be compelled to decide with their eyes fixed on Him alone.

I have grown very tired of hearing affluent Americans in their comfortable homes with manicured lawns living in a nation that enjoys greater religious freedom than any other in the history of the world whining about how they are being persecuted for their faith. Anyone who wants to learn about real persecution should subscribe to newsletters from the Voice of the Martyrs. There, they can read about people around the world who every day are being imprisoned, tortured, executed, driven from their homes, robbed of their possessions, raped, beaten by mobs, sold into slavery, and more, for no other reason than practicing their faith in Christ.

We are not called to defeat non-Christians; we are called to win them over. You cannot browbeat anyone into salvation. No one is saved by hostile and bitter diatribes. And no one is attracted to whining, spoiled crybabies.

OK. Enough ranting for now.

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Outside of Christ, I am empty; in Christ, I am full.
—Watchman Nee

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Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?”
Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?”
Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?”
But, conscience asks the question, “Is it right?”
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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