Nobility

Perhaps what most concerns me about many, not all, evangelical churches is the separation I see of the spiritual and the physical, the “eternal”—as they might think of it—and the incarnation. The two are not, in fact, separated at all, or so I am convicted.

 

Another reason I love Hemingway, aside from the fact that he is a very character-based and relationship-based author as opposed to an image-based author, is that he finds nobility in things that most wouldn’t consider noble. In a sense, when read from a Biblical perspective—which is my perspective—Hemingway does not, in any way, separate the “noble” endeavors with the “mundane” endeavors. If he had been a Christian, and I dearly wish he would have been, he would have been the kind of Christian the evangelical church needs right now. In To Have and Have Not, the opening chapter describes several characters swordfishing in the Gulf of Mexico—and it is one of the most beautiful Hemingway passages I have ever read. He puts such strength and beauty and nobility into—fishing. Similarly, in The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway describes with great care the bullfights.

 

What I am saying is that things like fishing can glorify the Father. We don’t always have to have some grand plan for saving peoples’ lives. To be sure, we should build relationships so that we can love other people and hope that God might use us to bring them to Him, but ultimately that is up to God. It is our job to just love and do things to make Him happy. Fishing is spiritual. Writing is spiritual. Teaching is spiritual. Selling software is spiritual. Everything is spiritual. Playing golf, reading, going for a run, buying a banana from the grocery store, smoking a cigarette, drinking a cup of coffee, going to a concert, riding a bike, going to the bathroom, eating a meal. Everything is spiritual. Why do we have to differentiate? God wants us, I believe, to enjoy Him, and sometimes we think we are just here on a mission or something like that, and that is simply not true. We should see the nobility, like Hemingway does, in fishing and eating and pooping and smiling and working and laughing and all of it.

 

The difficulty lies not in the writing this truth or reading this truth or even in realizing this truth, but the difficulty lies in practicing this truth. Doing it. We don’t read James enough. James is very beautiful, because he says that if you don’t have works your faith is dead. If you don’t have works, where is your faith? Did you ever have it? I think that when we get to heaven the crowd will be much different than we think, perhaps smaller and—gasp!—not all Americans! Oh the horror. White people will probably be the minority. We’ll see, I suppose.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I am not very good at seeing the nobility in simple things. The truth is, it is very difficult to see how drinking a glass of orange juice can glorify God or is noble, but I believe it is, and I believe that when we enjoy things that are simple it makes them noble and it makes God happy.

 

We should pray that God will give us this ability.

 

I need to go.