The undergraduate who works with me came back to work Wednesday and asked me an interesting question. He asked me if I expected people to rise up and challenge the political winds, and I told him that I expected most of them would piss and moan like impotent jerks and then roll over and take the punishment. People are willing to do almost anything as long as it doesn't cost them personally. This is why they will hand out money easily but don't show up to do the work, because even if you support me with money, I still have to go do the work or find someone for hire. We do the usual- flowers, chocolates, and promises we don't intend to keep, and then when people call us to the carpet we tell them that it doesn't matter what we said or did because it's in the past and that Christ would command us to forgive them. I think they're missing the point of Christ if they think that.
I told my young padawan that most people today esteem lightly what they have because they didn't have to pay much for it. Nobody had to cross the plains in a wagon or eek out an existence here farming the desert. America's poor today have more than some kings of antiquity. Too many of us think that if we are free to do some things that we are free, assuming that the things allowed me are things I desire to do. Our ignorance of history and our own religious traditions obfuscates the truth that freedom is the exception to the rule. Daniel was thrown into the pit of lions because he prayed vocally to his God after the king passed a decree that prayers be offered only to him. Most Americans don't know that several signers of the Declaration of Independence really did lose "their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor" to establish this nation. There are battlefields the world over full of the graves of men who paid the last full measure of devotion to defend their way of life.
Some Christians like to point to the story of Job as something that we can expect as a consequence of faithfulness. I do not think that Job's story is always ours. True Christianity requires of us the full measure of devotion. Just because a thing can occur doesn't follow that it will or that it must. Sometimes the reward of doing the right thing is that you did the right thing, and some of the other prophets died for their beliefs. Job and even Ester are exceptional because they are the exceptions. I am unaware of any Shakespearean story in which the happy ending comes in media res. I am more convinced than ever that hiking is a metaphor for life, because when we reach our intended destination we are still only half way done.
For this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God, for afterwards cometh the night during which no labor can be performed. Although the promise of restoration given to Job does stand, it does not say when the restoration will come. Many people in history stood for truth and right and died the martyr's death. I think of Thomas More who was beheaded for refusing to honor a king above God, and I think about one member of the Knights Hospitaler who opined the fact that while the Pope commanded death of infidels he did not think that Christ would agree. In fact, Christ taught the exact opposite. He reminded us that if we were of the world, the world would love us, for the world loveth its own, but the world hates us because we are Christ's. Then, He showed us how to pay the Full Measure of Devotion.
A small garden in Israel holds the tomb of Jesus who paid the last full measure of devotion for man. He understood that this life is not the end of our story. During His final prayer in Gethsemane, Christ asked His father to remove the cup of His travails and then uttered this truth. "But if not..." and then He was faithful until it was finished. Well, at least the sacrifice was. There was still more to suffer. From there, He was betrayed for 20 pieces of silver, detained without warrant, questioned without counsel, accused without corroborating testimony, taken before an illegal trial, scourged contrary to Roman law, and crucified at the behest of a mob. Crucifixion is one of the most barbaric forms of execution because it usually takes forever to die. He was nailed to the Cross, not just in His palms, but also in His wrists because they feared His weight might tear through the flesh in His hands. Then they gave Him vinegar when He asked for water, gambled to divide His belongings, and kept His mother from tending Him. So surprised were the Romans that He was already dead that they stabbed Him with a spear to prove it. He died an ignominious death.
Christ's example teaches us that sometimes life does not have a watermelon at the end of every chapter. Sometimes life is hard, and sometimes life is work, and sometimes life will cost us our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. Far too many of us have the misbegotten notion in our heads that a life of righteousness necessarily MUST lead to immediate and excessive prosperity in life. We assume that the prosperous are virtuous and that the struggling are wicked; apparently we learned NOTHING from the New Testament. In fact, sometimes we strike bargains with God in which we promise to obey God if He blesses us with what we demand only to blame Him when, after we defy His commandments, He refuses to follow ours. Christ healed a man who was afflicted from birth, not because of wickedness, but so that Christ could prove that it has nothing to do with that whatsoever. We do reap what we sow, but the happy ending usually only comes in the final act of existence, and Christ's life shows us precisely that. If we truly wish to inherit with Christ and live with Him and be like Him, we can expect nothing less than to suffer what He suffered so that we can fully appreciate the rewards of full devotion to truth and virtue that only true conviction can afford. Periodically people tell me that they wish they had my faith. What they really usually mean is that they wish they could attain my level of faith without having to endure and overcome. Christ showed us that such a notion is fairy tale.
I firmly believe that sometimes God allows good men to pass through deeper and longer troughs than any other person as a reality check for the rest. People are watching us, and if proper behavior always and immediately led to prosperity, people would behave well to gain the prosperity. Contrarily, we know that many of the prosperous are anything but virtuous, and many of them are criminals, miscreants, malcontents, and eager to compete with Lucifer for dominion in hell. Instead, like Daniel and Moses and the Founding Fathers, we are asked to stand fast a little at the risk of being heroes to set the example. Wicked men will describe our efforts as "tilting at windmills", but sometimes they need to be challenged, because they don't belong. Far too many Christians even show that like the rich man who came to Jesus they are willing to do anything to follow Christ as long as it doesn't cost them anything. They too walk away with hopes dashed.
Like God rewarded Christ, I firmly believe that each of these who stood and fell for his convictions will have the reward of eternity in the end. When we cross to the next world, those of us who fought and gave our full measure of devotion will walk amongst the hosts of living and dead. They will see the nicks in our Swords of Truth, the dings in our Shields of Faith, and they will know that a brave warrior has returned home, even if while alive we thought we lost. Christ, who descended below all things, shall rise above them in the end. That is where, I testify, He will hand out the watermelons of faithfulness to those who valiantly and vigilantly vindicated the virtuous. For some the rewards do come here, and I really hope that whoever you are that you find your land of promise in this life and start to make a homestead there. But if not, I testify that as Joshua and Caleb were promised in Deuteronomy for their faithfulness, in the end you will enter the promised land and have your inheritance if you showed you were willing to pay the requisite devotion. Like my cousin says, "It will be alright in the end. If it's not alright, it's not the end." Until then, a full measure is required.
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