I was a teenage fundamentalist - part eight

 Them’s fightin’ words, pilgrim

Everybody wants to get to heaven, an old Negro spiritual notes, but nobody wants to die. And as John Wayne pointed out often to James Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), it’s life’s ‘pilgrims’ (tenderfoots, or innocents) who tend to be on the express route to the heavenly realms.

In the eighth of the Salvationists’ doctrines, we read that ‘we are justified by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and that he that believeth hath the witness in himself’.

There are two large spiritual truths at play in this belief: A) that we are reconciled to God through faith in Jesus; and B) that we can be at peace with that internalised truth. In other words, we can’t pay our way to glory; and B) while we can’t and don’t have to ‘prove’ our faith, that faith serves to show ourselves and others that we are on the road home.

If we go by what Jesus had to say (not a bad approach, surely, for Christians; if one that seems to be going out of vogue) the church’s mandate is to be salt and light; a city set on a hill and a lamp free from any convenient cultural ‘bushels’. Martin Luther’s subsequent epiphany was a rediscovery of the freedom from fear and ritual that grace provides. We need works, oh yeah, we need works. But grace it what motivates ‘em.

So what’s The Salvation Army’s take on the grace/works divide? The oldies when I was a kid loved this chorus: ‘by the pathway of duty flows the river of God’s grace’ - what’s more, a lot of them tried to live by that truth.

The first public statement by The Salvation Army in Australia ended with this invitation: ‘If anyone hasn’t had tea then please wander back to my place; we’ll get you fed’ (my paraphrase). We’ve been feeding them ever since; be it through sustaining cuisine or spiritual counselling.

Balancing faith and works is a daily tightrope walk for Christians. As we know from the book of James (remembering that the writer was believed to be one of Christ’s earthly brothers - talk about a hard act to follow), faith without works is dead. Mere hypocrisy.

Curiously, it’s how we live (our works) that underpins and is underpinned by our faith. Our works also light the way for others to venture down Christ’s path.

What were the shining examples of faithful lives when you were a teenager? I had several, in my family and in the wider family that I was linked to through The Salvation Army. Perhaps one of the most unexpected, however, was an old saint named Ivy Hull.

I believe Ivy worshipped for a considerable time at The Salvation Army’s Brisbane City Temple (Brisbane is the capital city of Australia ’sunshine state’, Queensland). I grew to know and respect her while we were both soldiering at a now defunct corps south of Brisbane, Logan City, and I was one of her informal chauffeurs to and from meetings and social events.

Ivy was a tough woman who had fought illness for no small time. She wore heavy calipers on one of her legs and undulated back and forth as we walked, like she was flying into heavy winds hurled by an eternal stormfront.

Ivy was no public speaker, but she quietly encouraged anyone in her wake. She grabbed your hand and your arm, duly steadying herself while prolonging and deepening conversation. Ivy, like her God, didn’t play favourites. She spoke to anyone and everyone and would not be snubbed, dismissed, ignored or lessened. She knew she was beloved of God.

Doubt, pain, grief, loss; these were not conversational paths Ivy chose to venture down. She endured many things stoically, and encouraged people to find joy in their faith and their God. What stays with me is the certainty she possessed; Ivy knew God loved her. Ivy loved children, and she loved to laugh. Both qualities endure in those who knew Ivy.  

For postmoderns and sackcloth wearers (I don my own metaphorical suit of mourning more often than I care to, or would choose to), the examples of Ivy are large-scale flotsam and jetsam we can cling to in our own torrents of uncertainty.

We know God and love God; we question God and pursue God; we find God, lose God and find God again. That sequence is honest to my experience of faith, possibly to yours. That is grace embodied in a disembodied God. That is a testament to God’s love.

Citing ‘an ancient Orthodox writer’ in Reaching for an Invisible God, Philip Yancey writes that ‘God cannot be grasped by the mind. If he could be grasped, he would not be God.’

I have a good friend I haven’t caught up with in person for a few years now (tyranny of distance). When he’s up he’s an astronaut, but when he’s down you need a forklift to dig him out of what that beautiful old jailbird John Bunyan described (in The Pilgrim’s Progress) as the slough of despond.*

Do you ever wallow around, snoutfirst in your own bog of despair? It’s not overly helpful, although it’s comforting. It reeks of fear and littleness. And as we learn from Bunyan’s masterwork, it’s a good locale to avoid.

We believe that we are justified by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and that he that believeth hath the witness in himself. Think on those words. Can I get a witness?

To encourage you, and myself, I present Bunyan’s beloved hymn, To Be A Pilgrim:

He who would valiant be ‘gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.

Who so beset him round with dismal stories
Do but themselves confound-his strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight,
He will make good his right to be a pilgrim.

Since, Lord, Thou dost defend us with Thy Spirit,
We know we at the end, shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away! I’ll fear not what men say,
I’ll labour night and day to be a pilgrim.

To encourage you even further, consider this unpublished original verse from Bunyan’s fertile and fevered, though sacred and consecrated, imagination:

Hobgoblin nor foul fiend can daunt his spirit,
He knows he at the end shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away, he’ll fear not what men say,
He’ll labour night and day to be a pilgrim.

‘He knows he at the end shall life inherit.’ He that believes in Jesus, she that follows her Lord, knows that truth.

* And Bunyan ought to know, the poor bloke, having been imprisoned for nigh on 12 years for daring to worship God in a way other than that decreed by the Anglican Church. Tell you the truth, as a writer I envy him the time and solitude (though as a father and husband I recognise the cost of his literary space).

 

Writer: Barry Gittins is a Melbourne-based writer, lifelong Salvationist, husband (to Trudy) and father(to Emily and Benjamin) who seeks God in everyday encounters. A frustrated poet and playwright, he has worked for the Salvos’ Australia Southern Territory in various roles since 1991: as a journalist (for Warcry, The Young Soldier/Kidzone, The Musician),technical writer and CD-ROM author in corps program (mission development), senior review editor (Warcry) and editor (On Fire). He currently works as a social program and policy consultant (writer/researcher) for the social program department.