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Over the past 18 months, I’ve been working my way through a 1,000-page tome entitled A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Beeke & Jones, 2012). It’s not bedtime reading, but it has made me want to read and study the Puritans for the rest of my God-allotted days. This past Sunday, I read chapter 52 entitled “Puritan Theology Shaped by a Pilgrim Mentality.” You can see how J. I. Packer described the Puritan modus operandi in the screenshot below.
Growing up conservative Anabaptist, I was well aware of the stranger and pilgrim mentality. It was either talked about directly or indirectly. Directly through preaching on Hebrews 11:13, “These all died in faith…confess[ing] that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (KJV). And indirectly in our distinctive appearance and lifestyle which told anyone looking on that we were different. This world wasn’t our home. I’ve attended many camp meeting style services in my time, and we would sing songs such as “this world is not my home/I’m just a-passing through/my treasures are laid up/somewhere beyond the blue…” And we meant it.
Or did we?
I had a conversation with our Director of Operations today, and he read to me a few short sentences he had journaled a few days ago, to the effect of how much we’ve all bought into the world’s mentality—from dog food to diets to diversified 401ks. Yet C. S. Lewis wrote that we were made for another world (I’m not scanning all of his works on my shelf to find the citation!). Philip Yancey wrote Rumors of Another World (2003). In scanning that book, I see this quote I highlighted years ago: “We all know the lie being sold by the magazines, yet still we buy the promise that straight teeth, an ideal shape, and glossy hair will satisfy forever” (p. 168). C. S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory, “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased” (p. 26 in my bookshelf edition).
A spiritual apathy has descended upon the world. The mystics called it acedia or ennui. Monks wrote about “the noonday demon” which seeks to distract our focus from goodness, truth, and beauty to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life (I John 2:16). Eric Metaxas’ latest book Letter to the American Church just arrived on my desk yesterday. Here is the inside dust jacket:
The acculturation and comfort with this world shows up in the most unlikely places. I recently heard of a conservative Mennonite woman agreeing that giving up wearing masks in the hospitals is definitely going to result in more infections, because “masks work”! This chosen naivete refuses to look at evidence, instead worshipping at the altar of cultural assimilation. (For more on that, follow Ian Miller’s Unmasked right here.) You may wonder how the Christian community can be so naive. If you have an extra hour and ten minutes, I’d highly recommend listening to Irish pastor Luke Barker’s answer to that question. This was delivered at a conference in Northern Ireland in the fall of 2022. I won’t steal his thunder, but he delivers 4 spot-on and hard-hitting reasons.
I leave you with the sobering question to discuss around the dinner table. What does it mean to live as an “other-worldly” stranger and pilgrim in this life? In the above chapter on the Puritans, Beeke & Jones wrote:
“It is said that some believers are so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly use. That could not be more wrong with regard to the Puritans, who show us that we can be of no earthly use unless we are heavenly minded” (p. 856).
Have a wonderful evening!