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It has been over a year since I posted a blog. And what a year! I’m not ready to write about it, but I want to write something, so I decided to start off the year with a brief explanation of hillbilly praise.
Hillbillies are among the least understood ethnic groups in America. Others think they are lazy and shiftless when they are merely laconic. Hillbillies love understatement. They tend not be very expressive or dramatic. How do I know? Because I am a hillbilly.
It’s true.
My mother tried hard to cut us off from our hillbilly roots, but some things are bred in the bone. I grew up unaware that I carried within myself all the characteristics of a true hillbilly. Not until I began to notice that other people had a hard time reading me did I wonder why. Then my wife began to point out certain turns of phrase.
For example, she would ask my opinion of a movie. “Pretty good,” I would say whether I liked it or not. Over time she learned to detect subtle differences in the way I said “pretty good.” If I really liked something, I would say “pretty GOOD” with a subtle emphasis on the “good.” But if I thought it was dreck but didn’t want to offend, I would say “PRETty good.” For something mediocre or if I had no opinion, I would just say it without inflection.
Once I got started, I saw all kinds of things that marked me as a hillbilly. I’ve learned to embrace it, but it hasn’t been easy. People ask me how I’m doing. And now you know my answer: Pretty good.
Read and comment on my blog.
Every group has its insider language, its set of assumptions about what insiders know and outsiders do not. For some groups the distinction between insider and outsider is so important that the groups incorporate secret rituals to ensure that outsiders don’t penetrate into the inside without first becoming insiders. Other groups require specialized knowledge, but they make no secret of it, and it is effectively available to all who take an interest in learning it. A few groups, however, actively recruit new members and claim a universal appeal. Such groups require a highly permeable perimeter where the distinction between insider and outsider, between us and them, is essentially fuzzy. The New Testament church is such a group.
In the New Testament, exclusive language occurs almost always in the context of describing heretics or apostates. These are not people who have never been welcomed into the Christian faith; they are people who were welcomed in but turned out to be pursuing their own agenda. They might be the Judaizers of Paul’s letter to the Galatians or the proto-Gnostics of John’s letters. In nearly every case, though, they are former insiders who left or were forced out because their beliefs or teachings did not match those of the apostles.
Apart from these few, the New Testament church is very inclusive. Paul claims that the Christian faith encompasses every social and economic class and every ethnicity. “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, Barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” What characterizes a Christian is not circumstances of birth or station in life but rather virtues that Jesus himself embodied: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, forbearance, peace, and love. These are characteristics that are universally admired but not so universally practiced. (In fact, one of the great conundrums of life, effectively answered in Christ, is why people so much admire virtues they themselves do not practice, even to the point of pretending to themselves that they do practice them.*)
Every unbeliever is potentially a believer, and every believer is potentially a fraud. Since we do not know people’s hearts, we need to treat everyone alike with dignity and respect, just as God treats us. He keeps providing opportunities to trust him even to those who have never yet trusted him. We need to rid ourselves of the smug superiority so common among evangelical Christians; it is offensive to everyone. We are none of us so righteous we cannot fall nor so wicked we are past redemption. If we want to persuade anyone that Jesus Christ is worth living for, we must treat everyone with genuine love and kindness, not considering ourselves better but only as recipients of an undeserved pardon. On earth the kingdom of God includes everyone, even those who persecute it. Just ask Paul.
*For more information, see the works of C. S. Lewis, especially The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity.
Read and comment on my blog.
My son was newly home from Afghanistan when he recommended this book. He hadn’t even read it himself, but it was given to him by a fellow soldier who is also a friend. The book is War by Sebastian Junger. The author, a journalist by profession, follows a single platoon in the Korengal valley east of Kabul for fifteen months. The result is not just a description of war, but an account that includes insights into what draws young men into war, why they fight, and why they are ready even to give their lives.
Junger does excellent work interweaving descriptions of daily life—boredom, fatigue, squalor—with vivid accounts of firefights and reflections on the fundamental issues that war raises. Explaining the importance of unit cohesion, for example, Junger writes, “The cause doesn’t have to be righteous and battle doesn’t have to be winnable; but over and over again throughout history, men have chose to die in battle with their friends rather than flee on their own and survive.” He draws on work in psychology, biology, and military history to help explain what makes war possible, perhaps even necessary.
I am ill qualified, of course, to say how accurate is his portrayal of a modern platoon at war since I have never been in combat myself. My son, however, was in combat and after he reads the book, I invite him to comment on it here as well. Meanwhile, I highly recommend War to any reader who wants to understand war from a soldier’s perspective.
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