Sin and Pastoral Care

SOURCE:  

John Haddon Leith, From Generation to Generation: The Renewal of the Church According to Its Own Faith and Practice (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1990) pp. 144, 145-146, 147, 149.

KEYWORDS:  Sin, pastoral care, grace, gospel

From Dr. Rev. Jim Goodloe:

Pastoral care is the application of gospel of Jesus Christ to the lives of the members of the church of Jesus Christ. It is exercised primarily through preaching and teaching. It also includes visitation, calling, caring, and praying with and for the people, especially the sick, the bereaved, and those who are suffering or in distress in any way. Thus pastoral care helps build up the church.

Consider the importance of a proper understanding of the human problem which the church addresses with pastoral care:

"The doctrine of sin bears on pastoral care. Human beings, made good by a good God, are broken by sin. This theological conviction tells us something not only about human beings but also about the nature of the church. Peter Brown, in his remarkable biography of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, contends that the Pelagian-Augustinian controversy was, in the final analysis, a debate about the nature of the church, and therefore about pastoral care. . . . 

"Augustine thought of the church as an inn for convalescents, not as an aristocratic elite, certainly not as an elite corps for social reform. Augustine knew, as few in the history of the human race have ever known, the significance of the human will. He defined a person in terms of the human will. A person is not as he or she thinks, but as he or she wills. More specifically, a person is as the person loves. But Augustine knew that many achievements in life are beyond the power of the human will. Augustine made the case not so much for the power of the human will but for the power of grace. 'No subject gives me greater pleasure. For what ought to be more attractive to us sick men, than grace, grace by which we are healed; for us lazy men, than grace, grace by which we are stirred up; for us men longing to act, than grace, grace by which we are helped.' For such declarations as this, the church called Augustine the Doctor of Grace. . . . 

"Augustine's case was more difficult to present than Pelagius's, but far truer to the facts. The difficulty of Augustine's case can be easily demonstrated. Sermons that denounce evil and sermons that emphasize the general religious quality of life are easily understood by American congregations. Sermons that proclaim God's forgiveness and mercy are more difficult for audiences that do not know that they need forgiveness. Yet a sermon that emphasizes the gospel, that we are all sinners saved by grace, that our security is not in our own achievements but in the grace of God, always touches a few hearts very deeply in any congregation. . . . 

"It is very interesting to observe that the church has always been tempted to Pelagianism. This is a human perversity rather than first of all a theological perversity. The evidence is that today the Pelagians are found on both the left and the right-wing of the church. The right-wing and the left-wing alike define the church in terms of human righteousness and achievement, though their definitions of righteousness are obviously different. It is difficult for the crusader and the advocate of a cause or an orthodoxy to show mercy. Sinners need an Augustinian, not a Pelagian of the right or the left, for a pastor."

SOURCE:  "When Things Are Tough, Remember This." Daily Stoic. March 27, 2020
KEYWORDS:  worse, tough times, bad times, overwhelmed, difficulty

Most languages have some expression to the effect of “When it rains, it pours.” For instance, in Latin malis mala succedunt means troubles are followed by troubles. In Japanese, they say, “when crying, stung by bee.” The point of these expressions is to capture an unfortunate reality of life: that what can go wrong will… and often all at the same time.

Unforeseen Consequences of the Black Death

SOURCE:  "This Pandemic Will Change Us. We Just Don’t Know Quite How Yet," by Jonah Goldberg. Goldberg File. March 27, 2020. https://gfile.thedispatch.com/p/this-pandemic-will-change-us-we-just?

KEYWORDS:  unintended consequences, change, habit,

This pandemic is nothing like the Black Death in terms of its lethality, and the world today is nothing like that of the 14th century. But it’s worth recalling how much that pandemic changed the world—sometimes for the better (at least for the survivors, though not the Jews). For starters, we owe the plague credit for giving us the word “quarantine.” “During the Black Death, the Italians devised a 40-day isolation period for the sick, likely inspired by biblical events that lasted 40 days (the great flood, Lent, etc.),” notes the website Ranker. “The concept of isolating the sick pre-dates the Black Death, but the term ‘quarantine’ originates from that time.”

The plague killed a lot of people—estimates vary between 75 and 200 million in Europe and Asia. That’s something like one- to two-thirds of the global population at the time. The peasants left behind were left with a lot of land, and a lot of demand for their labor. Wages grew enormously and working conditions improved in order to attract labor. One lasting benefit of this new prosperity was that beer became less of a luxury and more of a commodity, giving rise to one of mankind’s greatest inventions: The British pub.

When aristocrats later tried to turn back the clock, waves of peasant revolts shook Europe, laying the groundwork for future uprisings.

The Catholic Church was forever wounded by the plague. First and foremost, the plague undermined the legitimacy of the church because it dealt a grievous blow to faith in God. It had more corporeal consequences as well: So many priests died—often the best ones—that the church was left with worse and more selfish leaders, and it grew more corrupt as a result. Bereft of quality manpower and with weakened credibility, the church retreated literally and figuratively from much of Europe.

Had this not happened, the Protestant Reformation may never have happened. That might be overstating things, but it’s a safe bet that it wouldn’t have happened the way it did.

Another—admittedly conjectural—benefit was that America didn’t become a Nordic country. The Vikings in Greenland were wiped out by the plague, making their eventual conquest of North America impossible.

Holding the Horses

SOURCE:  "This Pandemic Will Change Us. We Just Don’t Know Quite How Yet," by Jonah Goldberg. Goldberg File. March 27, 2020. https://gfile.thedispatch.com/p/this-pandemic-will-change-us-we-just?
KEYWORDS:  habit, change, prejudice

When World War II was just gearing up, the British were ill-prepared. They couldn’t just wait for factories—at home or in America—to start churning out the arsenal of democracy. They had to get ready with whatever was on hand. To that end, they de-mothballed some light field artillery last used during the Boer War and assembled the five-man crew required to fire it. But when they drilled with the equipment there was something not quite right. According to procedure, three seconds before discharging the weapon, two of the men would stand at attention off to the side and hold position until after the shot was fired. No one knew why they did that. Ultimately, they had to call in an old retired artillery officer.

He watched the exercise for a while, and then a spark of an old memory struck and he recognized what they were doing: "I have it. They are holding the horses."

They could tell the choreography didn’t make sense, but (like Chesterton’s fence) they couldn’t quite figure out why it was required.

This story comes from Robert Nisbet’s wonderful book, Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (which inspired my (underrated) second book, for what that’s worth). In it, Nisbet writes, “Habit and convention are so native to human beings, as to every other organism, because all behavior is purposive and adaptive. It is aimed at the solution of problems which beset the person or organization from the environment or from within.”

Love of Neighbor and the Image of God

SOURCE:  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated from the 1559 Latin edition by Ford Lewis Battles, 2 volumes, in Library of Christian Classics, edited by John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), Book 3, chapter 7, section 6 (volume 1, pages 696-97, emphasis added).
KEYWORDS: Imago Dei, love of neighbor, quarantine, social distance,

Recently shared by Rev. Jim Goodloe:

Scripture helps in the best way when it teaches that we are not to consider that men merit of themselves but to look upon the image of God in all men, to which we owe all honor and love. . . . Whatever man you meet who needs your aid, you have no reason to refuse to help him. Say, "He is a stranger"; but the Lord has given him a mark that ought to be familiar to you, by virtue of the fact that he forbids you to despise your own flesh. Say, "He is contemptible and worthless"; but the Lord shows him to be one to whom he has deigned to give the beauty of his image. Say that you owe nothing for any service of his; but God, as it were, has put him in his own place in order that you may recognize toward him the many and great benefits with which God has bound you to himself. Say that he does not deserve even your least effort for his sake; but the image of God, which recommends him to you, is worthy of your giving yourself and all your possessions. Now if he has not only deserved no good at your hand, but has also provoked you by unjust acts and curses, not even this is just reason why you should cease to embrace him in love and to perform the duties of love on his behalf. You will say, "He has deserved something far different of me." Yet what has the Lord deserved? While he bids you forgive this man for all sins he has committed against you, he would truly have them charged against himself. Assuredly there is but one way in which to achieve what is not merely difficult but utterly against human nature: to love those who hate us, to repay their evil deeds with benefits, to return blessings for reproaches. It is that we remember not to consider men's evil intention but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.

A Life of "Generativity"

SOURCE:  "You Might Never Be Famous — And That’s O.K."  Daily Stoic.  March 10, 2020.
KEYWORDS: Meaning, Life, Humility, Humble

Emily Esfahani Smith, author of the piece in the New York Times, titled “You’ll Never Be Famous — And That’s O.K.”, shared the opinion of the 20th-century psychologist Erik Erikson, who said that a flourishing, meaningful life is one of “generativity”.  She said in an interview,

“When we’re young, we’re supposed to figure out who we are and what our purpose is. As we get older, we’re supposed to shift the focus from ourselves to others and be ‘generative.’ That is, we’re supposed to give back, especially to younger generations, by doing things like raising children, mentoring colleagues, creating things of value for our community or society at large, volunteering, etc. We each have the power to be generative. Fame and glamour are about the self—aggrandizing yourself. But generativity is about connecting and contributing to something bigger, which is the very definition of leading a meaningful life.”