RUMORS OF ANOTHER WORLD by Philip Yancey

In "Rumors of Another World," Philip Yancey invites us to join him on a journey of discovery and consider "rumors of another world" that could point the way to a new life of beauty, purpose, and freedom. In this writing Philip Yancey grapples honestly with major life questions.

Arlo: (Part I What are we missing?) The following writings are for the most part, either direct quotations, or summations of thoughts presented in this wonderful writings of the "Rumors of Another World." In some instances, I will share my comments on that which has been written in the book that we are reviewing.

I found the first three chapters (Life in Part; Rumors; Paying Attention) very heavy, and only my confidence in the author and his great skill in writing was I able to perseve. However, chapter four (God loveth Adverbs) began with a delightful quote from Helen Keller: "For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that he has vouchsafed (condescended to give to) me knowledge of his works; deep thanks that he has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to--a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.

The quote: In this chapter Yancey spoke of growing up in the Woodstock generation (the late 1960's). "The sexual revolution left in its wake broken families, teenage pregnancies, epidemics in sexually transmitted diseases, and arguably even more exploitation of women." He referred to greed resulting in business bankruptcy; spirituality without religion; and mind and body altering drugs. "We humans struggle to find a balance between expressing our desires without inhibition and squelching them altogether. Even as the west lived through a period of great permissive-ness, other parts of the world were tightening controls over behavior. Some Muslim societies passed laws against women driving cars, showing their faces, or even speaking in public lest their voices prove too alluring. Communist governments, though atheistic, were almost as repressive and warned their citizens against the loose morals and rock music of the decadent West."

It was during such a time that Philip Yancey came back to his Christian faith! Philip Yancey said, "Yes, I came back, though not without resistance, for the churches I knew showed no ... balance. It took years for me to trust God as the smiling source of every good thing on this planet."

The Puritans had a saying, "God loveth adverbs," implying that God cares more about the spirit in which we live than the concrete results. They sought to connect all of life to its source in God, bringing the two worlds together rather than dividing them into sacred and secular. Pleasing God does not mean that we must busy ourselves with a new set of "spiritual" activities. As the Puritans said, whether cleaning house or preaching sermons, shoeing horses or translating the Bible for the Indians, any human activity may constitute an offering to God."

Luther sought to bring two worlds together, reading God into everyday life. "A thousand years before Luther, Saint Benedict had founded the Benedictines in order to break down the artificial wall between spiritual and secular activities. to pray is to work and to work is to pray, he told his followers. While studying theology and producing astonishing illuminated manuscripts, Benedictine monks also worked outdoors, draining swamps and cultivating fields."

"The Benedictines valued God's good gifts. If a tool or machine breaks, they repair it rather than buy a new one. They grow their own food and hire no servants. No work is beneath them, and from common tasks they can learn spiritual lessons, like humility: 'The rich do not sweep faster or better than the poor; the educated do not wash clothes better than the illiterate; the professional does not shovel snow more easily than the farm laborer; the cleric does not change automobile oil with more delicacy than the mechanic.'"

Philip Yancey said, "Today I fiddled with adjustments to the computer software I use. I sat and fidgeted, listening to canned music through a telephone receiver, while waiting for an airline ticketing agent. Then I drank coffee. I cleared a paper jam in a printer. I signed for a delivery from the UPS driver. I searched the Internet to check details about Martin Luther and Benedict of Nursia. I drank more coffee. I went over and over the same sentences, trying to get the words right. I checked a dictionary. I answered a few letters from readers. I paid some bills. I drove to Starbucks. How do I make these mundane tasks sacred? In part, I do so by trusting that the details serve a role in the overall scheme of writing, which I accept as my calling."

"And yet, I remind myself, did not the apostle Paul write the grand letter to the Romans while on a fund-raising trip for the poor of Jerusalem? Do not almost all his letters begin with soaring prayers and lofty theology and then descend abruptly to practical advice and requests to greet his friends? After the stirring doxology of Romans 11, the next few chapters covaer such topics as hospitality, sex, taxes, debt, holidays, and eating vegetables.

In chapter six, entitled, "designer sex," Philip Yancey tackles a subject upon which our Western civilization is pre-occupied. He continues by saying that "Sex, then, deserves a closer look, as a conspicuous case study of the difference between a one-world and two-world approach to life. I am fully aware of the challenge involved in tackling this subject in today's permissive atmosphere. Yet, if Christianity makes sense, it must make sense here."

Yancey says, "The attempt (of our Western society) to reduce human sex to a merely animal act, however, runs into unexpected problems. The more we learn about human sexuality, the more it apparently differs from how the animals do it. Yancey points out that humans are far more equipped for more frequent sexual acts than animals, and that for a longer period of human life---"Why are we so oversexed?" Here is Yancey's answer: "Relationship is the key. Human beings experience sex as a personal encounter, not just a biological act. We are the only species that commonly copulates face-to-face, so that partners look at each other as they mate, and have full-body contact," and all of that in great privacy!

Sex is more than a union of a male and a female body, "the Christian sees a deeper longing, for union with the God who created us. Sex prefigures that union by bringing together body and soul in a kind of wholeness not otherwise known."

Yancey states that the church gained a reputation as being the enemy of sex, then he proceeds to refer to the lives of Augustine and his contemporary Jerome as to how that reputation was gained by the church. Then he speaks of the Protestant Reformation and a shift in attitudes toward sex, as Martin Luther "scorned the church's rules against marital sex for the sake of pleasure and transferred to the home much of the respect that had been accorded the nunnery. When secular revolutions swept across Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the church's position as guardian of sexuality faded. Yet in England and America, Victorians brought back an ethic of repression, even to the extendt of covering the legs of furniture lest they arouse impure thoughts."

Yancey continues in the rest of the chapter by setting forth sex "as God intended: to look at sex not with a voyeur's (sexual gratification) leer (glance with sly, lascivious expression), but with a probing aim toward learning what lies behind it." "Uptight Christians forget the fundamental fact that God created sex." In this setting Yancey deals with sexual desire, and purity. Then he goes on to write of romance and marriage. He states, "I once heard an actor being interviewed on late-night television. 'Tell me,' said David Letterman, 'You're a sex symbol who plays all sorts of exciting roles with gorgeousw women. How does that compare to your real life, off-screen?' The actor reminded Letterman that he had been happily married for twenty years. Then he said, 'Here's the difference in a nutshell. In the movies, life is mostly about sex and occasionally about children. Married life is motly about children and occasionally about sex.'

Yancey writes, "... much of marriage consists in making day-to-day decisions, managing the complexities of careers and schedules, rearing children, negotiating differences, juggling finances, and all the other effort involved in keeping a home running." "Marriage strips away the illusions about sex pounded into us daily by the media. Few of us live with oversexed supermodels. We live instead with ordinary people, men and women who get bad breath, body odors, and unruly hair; who menstruate and experience occasional impotence; who have bad moods and embarras us in public; who pay more attention to our children's needs than our own. We live with people who require compassion, tolerance, understanding, and an endless supply of forgiveness. So do our partners. Such is the ironical power of sex: It lures us into a relationship that offers to teach us what we need far more, sacrifical love."

"Puritans called marriage 'the little church with the Church,' a place to test and also develop spiritual character. ... I persevere in the difficult times in my marriage for the same reason I persevere in the difficult times in my faith: because I believe that both touch something of eternal significance. "

Arlo: (Part II Signs of disorder) (Out of order) "In a few brush strokes, the book of Genesis paints a scene of few rules, no shame, bountiful joy, and an unlimited range of pleasure and creative work. Despair, drought, sickness, death, conflict--all that has cursed human history--did not exist in Eden." However, "Genesis records that in Paradise a great severing took place. Adam and Eve reached too far, trusting themselves rather than God to set the rules. They tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and ever since, human beings have known evil as a daily reality and good as daily longing." Pointedly and emphatically, Yancey states: "Christians must forever pick their way between delight in creation's gifts and sorrow for sin's distortions."

"Consider the seven deadly sins, a moral checklist that emerged from centuries of reflection. We live in a modern world so disordered from the original design that the entire notion of what is good for us has turned upside down." "In the modern world, sin approaches in camouflage. Too late do we realize that it blocks the path to shalom, to wholeness and health. We miss the hidden dangers that prompted the ancients to regard these sins as deadly. I have learned that these sins diminish me and bring disorder to my life. Pride is a kind of addiction, a yearning for ego strokes that will never be satisfied. Greed tempts me to move my focus from people to things. Lust keeps me from connecting in the most meaningful way, diverting that desire in a direction that ultimately does not satisfy. God wants to set me free; evil attempts to enslave."

Arlo: (A word unsaid) As I read this chapter, it seems to me that Yancey deals with two extremes in which our society lives and totally misses the road of truth, and drives in one ditch or the other! Concerning what? Concerning the sinfulness of mankind! Growing up in the Bible Belt under the preaching that he describes as "when heavy-breathing Southern revivalists would drawl the word (sin) in a two-syllable fury, 'See-yum.'" Yancey continues by stating, "Something strange has occurred in more recent times, however. Although almost every sermon in my childhod church centered on sin, the word has vanished in the years since then. ... Fear of sin, the dominant force of my chilhood, has nearly disappeared."

On a trip that Yancey made to Russia in 1991 after the collapse of communism, he had a conversation with a Marxist scholar, who said,"I had no idea that such horrors were taking place under Communism. I became a Communist with the best of ideals, to fight racism and poverty, to bring about a just society. Now I learn that we created a monster. We saw the evil in others--the capitalists, the rich, the exploiters--but not in ourselves. I have learned to distrust any utopian philosophy, especially one that sets 'us' against 'them.' The danger of evil is inside all of us, rich or poor, socialist or capitalist." "The disillusioned Marxist had just accepted a fundamental Christian belief about sin, that it affects everyone ever born. Christians have a most realistic view of humanity, believing that human beings have failed, are failing, and will always fail."

Arlo: (The good life) Yancey speaks of the good life as having its source in God, and the reception of that good life comes about by obedience to the Commands of God. "Each of the Ten Commandments offers a shield of protection against that disorder, stated negatively." "If I give my loyalty to a lesser god, I am the one who suffers, as any alcoholic or sex addict can attest. If I work seven days a week, my own body pays the price. Murder harms another person, of course, but it also extracts a cost on the murderer, searing his conscience and embittering his soul. Adultery and lying destroy trust and relationship. Coveting harms no one but the coveter; the neighbor who inspires such feelings may remain blissfully unaware. Taken together Ten Commandment weave life on this planet into some kind of meaningful whole, the purpose of which is to allow us to live as a peaceful, healthy community under God. Three hundred years ago the commentator Matthew Henry observed, "God has been pleased therein to twist interests with us, so that in seeking his glory we really and effectually seek our own true interests."

Arlo: (The gift of guilt) Elspeth Huxley said, "When other people commit sins, you are startled, but when you commit them yourself, they seem absolutely natural." Obviously, when we sin we need to acknowledge our sin, repent of it, and be restored in fellowship with God and others! Yancey climbs mountains, and he observes many "would-be" mountain climbers ill-clad for climbing. Lack of preparation is probably most responsible for incidents encountered by these ill-clad climbers. Then their greatest need is to be rescued. "Nevertheless, regardless of the circumstances, Alpine Rescue always responds to a call for help. Not once have they lectured a hapless tourist, 'Well, since you obviously ignored the most basic rules of the wilderness, you'll just have to sit here and bear the consequences. We won't assist you.' Their mission is rescue, and so they pursue every needy hiker in the wilderness, no matter how undeserving. A whistle, a cry, a flashing mirror, a bonfire, an 'S.O.S.' spelled out in pine branches, a message of distress from a cell phone---any of these signals will cause Alpine Rescue to mobilize teams of medically trained searchers.

Yancey continues:"I have come to see the central message of the Bible, too, as one of rescue. In the book of Romans, Paul takes pains to point out that none of us "deserve" God's mercy and none of us can save ourselves. Like a stranded hiker, all we can do is call for help."

"A hardened park ranger could look at the efforts of Alpine Rescue as indulging the bad habits of irresponsible tourists. Shouldn't they spend their energy instead handing out rewards to hikers who follow the rules? {"God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robberts, evildoers, adulterers," prayed the Pharisee.} When I posed such a question to my neighbor, she looked at me uncomprehending. "But our business is to rescue!" she said. "Do you expect us to leave any hiker stranded in the wilderness? I don't care who they are--they need help." {"In the same way," said Jesus, "I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."}"

"I ask myself why I so seldom call for spiritual rescue. In the wilderness, I would have no problem signaling for help. I carry whistles, mirrors, and other signaling devices for just that purpose. Yet often after I have sinned I shun the path of repentance that leads to restoration. What diverts me?"

"Sometimes I simply find ways to avoid facing my sin, whether out of pride, denial, or stubbornness. At other times, I shrink from the steps required for restoration for just the opposite reason. I think of myself as unacceptable, incurable, beyond the range of God's grace. Whenever I sense that, I realize I have a dostorted vision of God that needs correcting. "God is love," says the apostle John. God cannot help extending grace. Forgiveness, reconciliation, rescue define God's nature. Jesus' story of the prodigal son makes clear, the object of repentance is what we turn toward, not what we turn away from. Sitting in a pigsty, beset with hunger pains, the prodigal remembered a home with lanterns burning and food aplenty, and a father who longed to embrace him. Did he even remember the pain after the banquet, tucked in his own bed, welcomed back into a loving family?"

This chapter ends with, what I think is a very special story! Yancey says, "Once a week or so my church schedules a "Mom's Night Out," with free baby-sitting for single mothers who need a night off or mothers who simply want to spend an evening with their husbands. Our pastor's wife once happily took advantage of this program to go out to dinner with her husband. Later, when Peter, my pastor, went to pick up his three-year old son, the baby-sitter told him about one of the games they had played. She had asked each of the preschoolers what was Mommy's favorite thing to do with them. "You know what your son answered? He said that Mommy's favorite thing was to "clean me up."

"In truth," said Peter the next Sunday, "that isn't Susan's favorite thing to do with her son. Cleaning him up is an excuse to hold him. Absorbing the mess is just part of the process of getting close. And it's the same with God."

Arlo: (Part III Two worlds) (Why believe?) "'Where are you?' God called to Adam after the fateful choice in the garden. Once, God and human beings had walked and talked together as friends. Suddenly, a rupture opened between the visible world of Eden and the invisible world of God and spiritual reality. Adam and Eve were lost and alone on a strangely tilted planet."

"Despite the rupture, rumors of another world proved so convincing that for most of history people accepted without question the reality of two worlds, one visible and one invisible. They lived their everyday lives in the visible world of trees, rocks, and soil, while always acknowledging an unseen world as more powerful and significant. What they could not explain--sunrise, thunder, volcanoes--they credited to God or the gods. Indeed, the unseen world undergirded the world they could see and gave it purpose. Only in the last few centuries, as science advanced and the ideas of the Enlightenment spread, have people lived with no belief in an unseen world."

Yancey made "a trip to Russia that took place as he was writing this book. The trip began in Sweden, where he spent time with churchgoing Christians, a distinct minority in Sweden these days. He mentioned to them that even though many Swedes had turned away from church, their admirable society continued to live off the moral capital accumulated during centuries of Christian faith. Honesty, peacefulness, generosity, cleanliness, charity, compassion--the Vikings were not noted for such qualities before their conversion."

"What would Sweden look like if we used up our moral capital and those qualities disappeared?" one woman asked me. I replied that she could answer that question by visiting her near neighbor, Russia. There, brilliant men and women with a doctrinaire outlook--"dialectical materialism," they called it--set into motion an experiment on a huge scale to establish a society based on a one-world view of life. Quite properly, they saw religious faith as an obstacle to their experiment and thus shuttered 98% of the churches, killing 42,000 priests in the process. Some large cathedrals they turned into museums of atheism; village churches they converted into apartments or barns. They banned religious instruction to children and published a national newspaper called, The Godless."

"Over the next seventy-five years in the Soviet Union, a terrible irony played itself out. A society committed exclusively to justice in the visible world, here and now, achieved just the opposite. 'With the best of intentions, we ended up creating the greatest monstrosity the world has ever seen,' a shaken editor of Pravda told Yancey. Dostoyevsky's prophecy, 'Without God, everything is permitted,' proved tragically true in his nation's history."

"Archives that were recently released, detail the deaths of sixty million people at the hands of their own government. The Moscow Times estimates that one-half of all Russian males who died in the twentieth century died of unnatural causes, from war, famine, execution, or imprisonment. A massive economy collapsed of its own incompetence, and by many social standards--life expectancey, nutrition, disease, poverty rate--mighty Russia found itself among the world's developing countries."

"At the same time, communism succeeded in suppressing much of the Russian "soul." Visitors today comment on the scarcity of smiles, rudeness on the subways, the fear of crime, the quantity of alcohol consumed. Even Russian politicians complain about the lack of honesty and charity and in response, have commissioned foreign organizations to teach the Ten Commandments in the schools. 'Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither,' wrote C.S.Lewis. The Soviet experiment of the twentieth century vividly illustrates the second part of his formula. As if a symbol of repentance, a sparkling new Cathedral of Christ the Savior now overlooks the Kremlin, replacing one that Stalin destroyed to make way for a swimming pool."

Arlo: Let me give you a little background to Ernest Gordon. He was a Captain of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the British Army during World War II fighting the Japanese in South-East Asia. In 1942 he was captured at sea by the Japanese at the age of twenty-four. "Gordon was sent to work on the Burma-Siam railway that the Japanese were constructing through the dense Thai jungle for possible use in an invasion of India. For labor, they conscripted prisoners of war they had captured from occupied countries in Asia and from the British Army itself. Against international law, the Japanese forced even officers to work at manual labor, and each day Gordon would join a work detail of thousands of prisoners who hacked their way through the jungle and built up a track bed through low-lying swampland."

"Naked except for loin cloths, the men worked under a broiling sun in 120-degree heat, their bodies stung by insects, their bare feet cut and bruised by sharp stones. Death was commonplace. If a prisoner appeared to be lagging, a Japanese guard would beat him to death, bayonet him, or decapitate him in full view of the other prisoners. Many more men simply dropped dead from exhaution, malnutrition, and disease. Under these severe conditions, with such inadequate care for prisoners, 80,000 men ultimately died building the railway."

"Ernest Gordon could feel himself gradually wasting away from a combination of beriberi, worms, malaria, dysentery, and typhoid. Then a virulent case of diphtheria ravaged his throat and palate so severely that when he tried to drink or eat, the rice or water would come gushing out through his nose. As a side effect of the disease, his legs lost all sensation. Parlyzed and unable to eat, Gordon asked to be laid in the Death House, where prisoners on the verge of death were laid out in rows until they stopped breathing. The stench was unbearable. He had no energy even to fight off the bedbugs, lice, and swarming flies. He propped himself up on one elbow long enough to write a final letter to his parents and then lay back to await the inevitable."

"Gordon's friends, though, had other plans. They built a new bamboo addition onto their hut on high ground, away from the swamp. They carried his shriveled body on a stretcher from the contaminated earth floor of the Death House to a new bed of split bamboo, installing him in clean quarters for the first time in months."

"Something was astir in the prison camp, something that Gordon would call 'Miracle on the River Kwai.' For most of the war, the prison camp had been a laboratory of survival of the fittest, every man for himself. In the food line, prisoners fought over the few scaps of vegetable or grains of rice floating in the greasy broth. Officers refused to share any of their special rations. Theft was common in the barracks. Men lived like animals, and hate was the main motivation to stay alive. Recently, though, a change had come. One event in particular shook the prisoners. Japanese guards carefully counted tools at the end of a day's work, and one day the guard shouted that a shovel was missing. He walked up and down the ranks demanding to know who had stolen it. When no one confessed, he screamed 'All die! All die!' and raised his rifle to fire at the first man in the line. At that instant an enlisted man stepped forward, stood at attention, and said, 'I did it.'"

"The guard fell on him in a fury, kicking and beating the prisoner, who despite the blows still managed to stand at attention. Enraged, the guard lifted his weapon high in the air and brought the rifle butt down on the soldier's skull. The man sank in a heap to the ground, but the guard continued kicking his motionless body. When the assault finally stopped, the other prisoners picked up their comrade's corpse and marched back to the camp. That evening, when tools were inventoried again, the work crew discovered a mistake had been made: no shovel was missing."

"One of the prisoners remembered the verse 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' Attitudes in the camp began to shift. Prisoners started treating the dying with respect, organizing proper funerals and burials, marking each man's grave with a cross. With no prompting, prisoners began looking out for each other rather than themselves. Thefts grew increasingly rare."

"Gordon sensed the change in a very personal way as two fellow Scots volunteered to come each day and care for him. One faithfully dressed the ulceers on his legs and massaged the useless, atrophied muscles. Another brought him food and cleaned his latrine. Yet another prisoneer exchanged his own watch for some medicine that might help the infection and fever. After weeks of such tender care, Gordon put on a little weight and, to his amazement, regained partial use of his legs. As Gordon continued to recover, some of the men, knowing he had studied philosophy, asked him to lead a discussion group on ethics. The conversations kept circling around the issue of how to prepare for death, the most urgent question in the camp. Seeking answers, Gordon returned to fragments of faith recalled from his childhood. He had thought little about God for years, but as he would latere put it, 'Faith thrives when there is no hope but God.' By default, Gordon became the unofficial camp chaplain. The prisoners built a tiny church, and each evening they gathered to say prayers for those with greatest needs."

"Gordon's book tells of the transformations of individual men in the camp, a transformation so complete that when liberation finally came the prisoners treated their sadistic guards with kindness and not revenge. Gordon's own life took an unexpected turn. IN an about-face from all his previous plans, he enrolled in seminary and became a Presbyterian minister, ending up as Dean of the Chapel at Princeton University, where he died in early 2002, just before the move about his was completed."

"Two worlds lived side by side in the jungles of Thailand in the early 1940s. The miracle on the River Kwai was no less than the creation of an alternate community, a tiny settlement of the Kingdom of God taking root in the least likely soil, a spiritual fellowship that somehow proved more substancial and more real than the world of death and despair all around."

"To a man, the prisoners clung to the desperate hope that their lives would not end in a jungle prison in Thailand but would resume, after liberation, back in the hills of Scotland or on the streets of London or wherever they called hom. Yet even if it did not, they would endeavor to build a community of faith, beauty, and compassion, nourishing souls even in a place that destroyed bodies."

Arlo: (Earth matters) "Reading Paul's letters, I sense that to him the invisible world had a reality more substantial and more trustworthy than the visible world he lived in. ... Frankly, the reality of evil is what has strengthened my faith in the invisible world. Yancey had a conversation with Bob Seiple, then president of World Vision, after he returned from Rwanda at the time of the massacres there. Yancey said, "As I listened to Seiple, I too could think of no force in nature to explain what was happening in Rwanda, only the desire to do evil to others from supernature---the same kind of inexplicable force that caused Hitler to divert badly needed resources during wartime in order to carry out genocide against the Jews." "I came to accept the apostle Paul's assertion that our real struggle is waged against forces we cannot see. Much more is happening on this planet than is visible to the human eye. Isabella in Vienna, Ernest Gordon in the Thai jungle, and early Christians in Rome all recognized the struggle and gave their allegiance to an invisible kingdom arrayed against the spiritual powers of this dark world."

Yancey tells of his experience when he went out in a rubber Zodiac boat to watch sperm whales off the coast of New Zealand. "The whale would rest on the surface for a while, then breathe deeply a few times, his exhalations creating a spectacular spout, before lifting his tail flukes high above the water and plunging a mile deep to feed on squid. Our guide would mark the spot, go hunt more whales, and return forty-five minutes later to let us watch the original sperm whale surface for a gigantic gulp of fresh air. To the whale, most of my daily surroundings--mountains, cities, highways--exist in an "invisible" world, for its eyes can only take in sights level with the waterline. The whale has its own lively, congested habitat of marine plants and sea creatures. Yet unless it surfaces for oxygen once an hour or so, it dies. Though it knows little about the world above the sea, it needs vital contact with it simply to survive."

"Spiritually, I sometimes feel like that whale, coming up for air at regular intervals to stay alive, then disappearing into a much more familiar environment in the cold and dark below. Even as I write that analogy, though, I realize its deceptive inadequacy, for it summons up the image of a universe with "upper" and "lower" stories that occasionally interact. The biblical view is at once more subtle and more connected. It presents reality as a seamless whole, with no neat division between sacred and profane or between natural and supernatural. There is only God's world, a scared world, which has been profaned by human rebellion. Our mission is to bring the two together, to reconnect and hallow God's world, to build settlements of God's kingdom in the desecrated habitat of earth."

Arlo: Yancey presents an amazing contrast of two connections between the natural and the supernatural worlds that delights my spirit. First he states: "All over the world today, millions of Christians prayed the Lord's Prayer, including the phrase 'your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' We do not need to look far to see how much remains to be answered in that prayer. 'As above, so below,' Jesus prayed, in essence, and then left us to give flesh to that request. For the planet, God's will done on earth as it is in heaven would mean food, water, and homes for all who lack, justice in politics and economics, peace between nations, harmony with nature, healing and comfort for the sick, souls reconnected to their spiritual source. For each of us, God's will means some small role in furthering the above."

In Matthew 18:18 and 25:31-46, "Jesus introduced a further, far more radical notion, a reversal of the formula: 'As below, so above.' This time, earth provokes heaven. 'I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven,' Jesus told Peter. He said that our practical response to the sick and imprisoned, the hungry and needy, would contribute to our eternal destiny--would be the same, in fact, as if we had ministered to him in person."

"As below, so above: Transposing two words changes everything. The most common, mundane tasks we do on earth--writing a prisoner, visiting a nursing home, comforting a neighbor, standing strong like Isabella against a decadent world--become charged with eternal significance. The ultimate destiny of the world, and of ourselves, is being played out right now. Everything matters, in ways we cannot yet see."

Arlo: (Eyes of faith) 2 Corinthians 5:20 "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us." Yancey states, "I shudder at the sheer audacity of God entrusting such a task--God making his appeal through us--to species known for making divisions between beautiful and ugly, rich and poor, dark-skinned and light, male and female, strong and weak. Taking God's assignment seriously means that I must learn to look at the world upside down, as Jesus did. Instead of seeking out people who stroke my ego, I find those whose egos need stroking; instead of important people with resources who can do me favors, I find people with few resources; instead of the strong, I look for the weak; instead of the healthy, the sick. Is not this how God reconciles the world to himself? Did Jesus not insist that he came for the sinners and not the righteous, for the sick and not the healthy?'

"The founder of the l'Arche homes for the mentally disabled, Jean Vanier, says that people often look upon him as mad. The brilliantly educated son of a governor general of Canada, he recruits skilled workers (Henri Nouwen was one) to serve and live among damaged people whose IQs register in the low double digits. Vanier shrugs off those who second-guess his choices by saying he would rather be crazy by following the foolishness of the Gospel that the non-sense of the values of our world. Furthermore, Vanier insists that those who serve the deformed and damaged benefit as much as the ones whom they are helping. Even the most disabled individuals respond instinctively to love, and in so doing they awaken what is most important in a human being: compassion, generosity, humility, love. Paradoxically, they replenish life in the very helpers who serve them."

"In India I have worshiped among leprosy patients whose physical deformities provoke the same response from onlookers that John Merrick's did. Most of the medical advances in the treatment of leprosy came about as a result of missionary doctors, who alone were willing to live among patients and risk exposure to study the dreaded disease. As a result, Christian churches thrive in most major leprosy centers. ... In Jean Vanier's center in Toronto,I have watched a scholarly priest lavish daily care on a middle-aged man so mentally handicapped that he could not speak a word. The most arousing church services I have attended took place in Chile and Peru, in the bowels of a federal prison. Among the lowly, the wretched, the downtrodden, the rejects, God's kingdom takes root. Jesse Jackson tells the story of a visit to the University of Southern Mississippi. While touring the campus with the university president, he noticed a towering male student, six-feet, eight-inches tall, holding hands with a midget coed barely three-feet tall. His curiosity piqued, Jackson stopped to watch as the young man, dressed in a warm-up suit, tenderly picked up the midget, kissed her, and sent her off to class. The president explained that the student was a star basketball player. Both parents had died in his youth, and he made a vow to look after his sister. Many scholarship offers came his way, but only Southern Mississippi offered one to his sister too. Jackson went over to the basketball star, introduced himself, and said he appreciated him looking out for his sister. The athlete shrugged and said, 'Those of us who God makes six-eight have to look out for those he makes three-three.'" WHAT A REMARKABLE MODEL OF HUMILITY!

Arlo: (Practicing the existence of God) In this chapter Yancey deals with four themes, money, hardship, death and moral failures. Yancey's opening statement on MONEY: "Jesus spoke more often on the topic of money than any other, and surely I must view it differently in the light of another world. ... Jesus saw money as something to guard against, not desire. 'Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,' he said--an alarming thought to those of us who live in societies loaded with tangible treasure. He protrayed money as a negative spiritual force, a god named Mammon that pits itself against the kingdom of heaven. 'You cannot serve both God and Money,' he said bluntly."

HARDSHIP: When Yancey was preparing for a ministry trip to Myanmar (formerly Burma), "In preparation for the trip, I read several biographies of Adoniram Judson, one of the first missionaries from the United States and the one who first brought the Christian faith to Burma. Hardship stalked his life. When war broke out with England, the Burmese arrested Judson because, light-skinned and English-speaking, he looked and talked like the enemy. Judson was force-marched barefoot for eight miles to a prison, where each night the guards passed a bamboo pole between his heavily shackled legs and hoisted the lower part of his body high off the ground. Blood rushed to his head, preventing sleep and causing fierce cramps in his shoulders and back. Clouds of mosquitoes feasted on the raw flesh of his feet and legs. Treatment like this went on for almost two years, and Judson managed to endure only because his devoted wife brought him food each day and pled with the guards for better treatment."

"A few months after his release, Judson's wife, weakened by smallpox, died of fever, and shortly after that their baby daughter also died. Judson nearly had a breakdown. He would kneel by his wife's grave for hours each day, regardless of weather. He built a one-room hut in the jungle, morosely dug his own grave in case it might prove necessary, and worked in solitude on a translation of the Bible in the Burmese language. Only a handful of Burmese had showed any interest in the Christian message. Yet he stayed on, thirty-four years in all, and because of his faithfulness more than one million Burmese Christians today trace their spiritual roots to Adoniram Judson. The dictionary he compiled, now nearly two hundred years old, remains the official dictionary of Myanmar."

"'Do not be afraid' is the most frequent command in the Bible, which seems wholly appropriate in an era when terrorists could strike at any moment and a mailed envelope mlay carry a biological agent. We have a thousand fears: mammograms and prostate tests, our children's future as well as their present, retirement funds, job security, crime. We fear not getting the job we want or the lover we desire, and if we have them we fear their loss. In the face of such everyday fear, Jesus points to a lily, or a sparrow, and calmly says, Trust. Seek first the kingdom of heaven."

DEATH: "Death casts its shadow in advance. Not one of us has experienced death, yet no one doubts it will come. We live in constant awareness, from media reports of cancer agents to fears of war and terrorist attacks. When death strikes closer--someone we know, somenone we love--the shadow deepens."

"In a cold dungeon, his life nearing an end, Paul wrote his friend Timothy, 'For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought a good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.' He then spoke of anticipating rewaards from 'the Lord, the righteous Judge.' My goal for growing older, for preparing to die, is to care less about how others view me and more about how God views me. We'll have much longer together, after all."

MORAL FAILURES: Yancey wrote: "Grace is irrational, unfair, unjust, and only makes sense if I believe in another world governed by a merciful God who always offers another chance. 'Amazing Grace,' a rare hymn that in recent times climbed the charts of popular music, holds out the promise that God judges people not for what they have been but what they could be, not by their past but by their future. John Newton, a gruff and bawdy slave trader, 'a wretch like me,' wrote that hymn after being transformed by the power of amazing grace."

"When the world sees grace in action, it falls silent. Nelson Mandela taught the world a lesson in grace when, after emerging from prison after twenty-seven years and being elected president of South Africa, he asked his jailer to join him on the inauguration platform. He then appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to head an official government panel with a daunting name, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Mandela sought to defuse the natural pattern of revenge that he had seen in so many countries where one oppressed race or tribe took control from another."

"For the next two-and-a-half years, South Africans listened to reports of atrocities coming out of the TRC hearings. The rules were simple: if a white policeman or army officer voluntarily faced his accusers, confessed his crime, and fully acknowledged his guilt, he coul not be tried and punished for that crime. Hard-liners grumbled about the obvious injustice of letting criminals go free, but Mandela insisted that the country needed healing even more than it needed justice."

"At one hearing, a policemen named van de Broek recounted an incident when he and other officers shot an eighteen-year-old boy and burned his body ... in order to destroy the evidence. Eight years later van de Broek returned to the same house and seized the boy's father. The wife was forced to watch as policemen bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body, and ignited it. The courtroom grew hushed as the elderly woman who had lost first her son and then her husband was given a chance to respond. 'What do you want from Mr. van de Broek?' the judge asked. She said she wanted van de Broek to go to the place where theyd burned her husband's body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial. His head down, the policeman nodded agreement. Then she added a further request, 'Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is foriven by God, and I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.' Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing, 'Amazing Grace' as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but van de Broek did not hear the hymn. He had fainted, overwhelmed. Justice was not done in South Africa that day ... something beyond justice took place. 'Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,' said Paul. ... Revenge perpetuates the evil. Justice punishes it. Evil is overcome by good only if the injured party absorbs it, refusing to allow it to go any further. And that is the pattern of otherworldly grace that Jesus showed in his life and death."

Arlo: (Stereoscopic vision) Obviously the title of this chapter indicates that we need to hold both worlds within our view: Practically, we are citizens of earth, but spiritually, we are citizens of heaven, so we are citizens of both kingdoms of earth and heaven simultaneously! So one might say that we live by sight and by faith simultaneously! It is my judgment that when we live by faith in the invisible realities of the heavenly kingdom, we receive invaluable training. This wealth of training from our walk of faith is applicable to our natural life that is being lived out in the earthly kingdom of this world! Hence we need stereoscopic vision, the ability to view two kingdoms that function at slightly different angles simultaneously!

WHEN WE HURT by Philip Yancey

Philip Yancey's books have been translated in 25 languages and have sold over 14 million copies since he was first published in 1977. A former journalist and writer by vocation, Yancey spent many of his adult years in Chicago, writing for a wide variety of magazines, including Readers Digest, Saturday Evening Post, National Wildlife, and Christianity Today.
Paul Brand was a world-renowned hand surgeon and leprosy specialist. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said, "As a surgeon, scholar, investigator, and philosopher gifted with rare insight, Paul Brand has lived and worked among the pain-afflicted. His extraordinary experiences have a strong thematic unity which allows him to present a rather startling perspective on pain. He opens the window onto new ways of looking at pain, and that translates into something of worth. Paul Brand offers an opportunity to look at pain not as your enemy, but as your friend." Dr. Brand died in 2003 from complications after a fall.

Arlo: The following thoughts are either quotations or summations found in Yancey's book, "When We Hurt," which are excerpts taken from "Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants" by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey. Dr. Paul Brand looked at pain, not as an enemy, but as a friend. He spent 25 years in England, and of Londoners, he said, "Londoners suffered gladly for a cause during World War II." He spent 27 years among the people of India, and of them he said, "These people expected suffering and learned not to fear it." He also lived more than 30 years in the United States, and of them he said that "American people suffered less, but feared it more."

There is great danger for those (like leprous individuals), who have lost their ability to feel pain. That loss, has and continues to lead to a disastrous destruction of body parts, or even death! "A larynx that never feels a tickle does not trigger the cough reflex that relocates phlegm from the lungs to the pharynx, and a person who never coughs runs the risk of developing pneumonia." Nevertheless, pain is a gift nobody wants! A medicated pain loses it power to instruct the body that something is dangerously wrong in the body's functioning ability. "First, listen to your pain. It is your own body talking to you." Don't over-medicate your body in your earnest desire to rid it of pain!

"Pain is a priceless essential gift---of that I have no doubt. and yet only by learning to master pain can we keep it from mastering us." "We cannot live well without pain, but how do we best live with it?" He divided the experience of pain into three stages: First, there is the pain signal, an alarm that goes off when nerve endings in the periphery sense danger. At the second stage of pain, the spinal cord and base of the brain act as a "spinal gate" to sort out which of the many millions of signals deserve to be forwarded as a message to the brain. The third, or final stage of pain, takes place in the higher brain (especially the cerebral cortex), which sorts through the prescreened messages and decides on a response. In fact, "pain does not truly exist until the entire cycle of signal, message, and response has been completed."

There are three stages of pain: A girl is running, and falls. As she scrapes her knee, there is a signal of the injury of the knee by pain. On the ground, she rolls over to avoid further contact between the injured knee and the ground, this is an emergency maneuver ordered by the spinal cord. Half a second passes, and the girl becomes conscious of the stinging sensation from her scraped knee. How she then responds will depend on the severity of the scrape, her own personality makeup, and what else is going on around her. The girl looks at the knee, sees blood, and now the conscious brain takes over. Fear enhances the pain. But the comfort of a parent, or a friend replaces the fear with reassurance. As the adult fusses over the sore, washes away the blood, covers the wound with decorative adhesive bandage, the child soon goes back to play. The girl forgets about the pain. In the case of an adult, the larger pool of experience and emotions results in the mind playing a greater role in the thinking process within the brain in coping with the pain.

"I would probably rank the stages of pain in the reverse order, giving prominence to the third stage first. What takes place in a person's mind is the most important aspect of pain---and the most difficult to treat or even comprehend. If we can learn to handle pain at this third stage, we will most likely succeed in keeping pain in its proper place, as servant and not master." In considering the whole issue of pain, the circumstances and the thoughts of the mind have made a great difference in the awareness of pain and the treatment of injury. In the case of the injury of soldiers in a war zone: Only one in four soldiers with serious injuries, (such as fractures, and amputations) asked for morphine, though it was freely available. They simply did not need help with the pain, and indeed many of them denied feeling pain at all. In the wounded soldier the response to injury was relief, thankfulness at his escape alive from the battlefield, even euphoria. In contrast, 80% of civilian patients recovering from surgical wounds begged for morphine or other narcotics as these patients considered major surgery as a depressing and calamitous event. Obviously, the mind plays an important role in pain.

A Dr. Hans Selye said, "Gratitude is the single response most nourishing to health." In view of Dr. Selye's research into the impact of emotions on health, begins with gratitude as his first suggestion in making preparations for pain. He spoke of the negative effects of such emotions as anxiety, depression, vengeance and bitterness. Conversely, he concluded, gratitude is the single response most nourishing to health. "I find myself agreeing with Selye, in part because a grateful appreciation for pain's many benefits has so transformed my own outlook. People who view pain as the enemy, he has noted, instinctively responded with vengeance or bitterness---why me? I don't deserve this! It's not fair! We should think of pain as a speech our body is delivering about a subject of vital importance to us. The body is using the language of pain because that's the most effective way to get our attention."

"The path to health must begin by taking pain into account. Instead, we silence pain when we should be straining our ears to hear it; we eat too fast and too much and take a seltzer; we work too long and too hard and take a tranquilizer. The three best-selling drugs in the United States are a hypertension drug, a medication for ulcers, and a tranquilizer. Such is the case in that, for the most part, we look upon pain as the illness rather than the symptom." Continuing it was said, "I rarely feel grateful for the fact of pain, but I almost always feel grateful for the message that it brings. I can count on pain to represent my best interestes in the most urgent way available. It is then up to me to act on those recommendations."

"During the Middle Ages---a time of chaos and great suffering---religious orders devised a series of contemplative exercises. Most of them included prayer, meditation, and fasting, all disciplines directed toward the inner life." "I have found that disciplines of the spirit can have an extraordinary effect on the body, and especially on pain. Prayer helps me cope with pain, by moving my mental focus away from a fixation on my body's complaints. As I pray, nourishing the life of the spirit, my tension level goes down and my consciousness of pain tends to recede. It did not surprise me at all to learn recently from a medical researcher that people who have strong religious faith have a lower incident of heart attack, arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, and hypertension than those who do not."

"The best single thing that I can do to prepare for pain is to surround myself with a loving community who will stand beside me when tragedy strikes. Wherever we have lived, we have sought out and have had the good fortune of finding a caring church." "Death is the one sure fact of life, of course. I trust the words of the psalmist, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.' I have learned the best way to disarm my fears about terminal illness, and about the possibility of great pain, is to face them in advance, before God, and within a community that will share them."

One of these authors tell of feeling urgent pain signals (stage one) from his upper abdomen, he had no idea as to what danger these pains were alerting to him. He knew that the pain was too severe to indicate indigestion. His age being right for cancer to appear, so by the time he visited the doctor, he had worked himself into a churning state of fear. An X-ray revealed that he had gallstones, not cancer, a painful condition to be sure, but one easily treatable with surgery. The abdominal attacks kept occurring, but right away they seemed less painful. Although the pain signals themselves did not diminish, his perception of them (stage three) surely changed as his anxiety lessened. Surgery was delayed, so he had many opportunities to practice his mastery over pain.

"Researchers have discovered that the body manufacatures its own narcotics, which it can release upon command to block out pain. The brain is a master pharmacologist. To stimulate the brain's own painkillers has nearly unlimited potential. We know that a person's response to pain depends to a very large degree on "subjective" factors, such as emotional preparedness and cultural expectations, which in turn affect the brain's chemistry. By altering these subjective factors, we can directly influence the perception of pain." Barbara Wolf in her book, "Living with Pain," recommends "work, reading, humor, hobbies, pets, sports, volunteer work, or anything else that can divert the sufferer's mind from pain. When pain strikes with fury in the middle of the night, Wolf gets up, maps out the day ahead, works on a lecture, or completely plans a dinner party." One specialist at a chronic pain center said that many patients want to wait until the pain subsides before they resume normal functioning. But he has learned that coping with chronic pain depends on a patient's willingness to exercise and increase productive activity despite the feeling of pain.

One of these authors use the term, "pain intensifiers" for responses that heighten the perception of pain within the conscious mind. He identifies these intensifiers as being, fear, anger, guilt, loneliness, helplessness. He speaks of fear as the strongest intensifier of pain. When an injured person is afraid, muscles tense and contract, increasing the pressure on damaged nerves and causing even more pain. Blood pressure and vasodilation (the constriction of blood vessels)change, too, which is why a frightened person goes pale or flushes red. I encourage patients to talk about their fear so that together we can relate the fear to the pain signal. Fear, like pain, can be good or bad. Fear stops me from taking foolish risks when I drive a car or go downhill skiing. Problems only develop when fear (or pain) grows out of proportion to the danger.

A Californian, Tim Hansel, by name was injured when he fell headfirst into a crevasse, striking a rock at the bottom. A Medical Specialist, upon examining him, said, 'You'll just have to live with the pain. Surgery can't help.' He lived with the fear of reinjuring himself, paralyzed by that fear, he said to the specialist, 'Tell me specifically, what must I avoid?' The Doctor's reply, 'The damage is irreversible. I suppose I would recommend against painting eaves---that would put too great a strain on your neck. But as far as I can tell, you can do whatever else the pain will allow you to do.' According to Hansel, that word from the doctor gave him a new lease on life. He went back to climbing mountains and leading expeditions. Tim Hansel's pain did not go away. But his fear did, and he found that with the reduction of fear, his pain eventually decreased as well. He learned to master pain because he no longer feared it.

Bernie Siegel said, 'To hate is easy, but it is healthier to love!' A horrendous act was perpetrated by a husband against his spouse. You can read about it on pages 86-89 of "When We Hurt." One of these authors said, "Too often I have seen the physiological effect on people who became angry with their employer, or the driver of the other car, or the previous surgion, or a spouse who lacked sympathy, or God. The anger must be dealt with, of course; it does not go away on its own. But if it is not dealt with, if it is allowed to fester in the mind and soul, the anger may release its poison in the body, affecting pain and healing."

Christopher Isherwood said, "By helping yourself, you are helping mankind. By helping mankind, you are helping yourself. That's the law of all spiritual progress." Paul Brand, when in medical residency during World War II, saw proof of the positive benefits that can result when patients feel useful. Britain was suffering heavy casualties on the European front, and the military ordered a sudden call-up of nurses. With a shortage of staff, patients were asked to fill in. A nursing supervisor assigned duties to every patient who could walk, and even a few in wheelchairs. They fetched bedpans, changed sheets, distributed food and water, and took temperature and blood pressure readings. The system worked well, and it produced one rather extraordinary side benefit: patients got so caught up in caring for each other's suffering that they forgot about their own. There was a 50% drop in demands for pain medication. On Paul Brand's rounds at night, he found that patients who usually needed sleeping pills were peacefully asleep by the time he came around. After a few weeks of this emergency program, the hospital recruited more nurses and relieved the patients of their volunteer duties. Dosages almost immediately went back up, and the usual atmosphere of helplessness and lethargy wafted in.