Monday, December 26, 2022

Though . . . Yet

 Yesterday was Christmas Day, the first time for Christmas to be on a Sunday since 2016—and the next time won’t be until 2033. On the week before Christmas, my church’s theme for the Sunday worship service was “Do you see what I see?” and yesterday it was based on Habakkuk 3:17~19.

“Do You Hear What I Hear?” has been a popular Christmas song since the 1960s. Perhaps few people have recognized that that song was written as a Christmas prayer for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.**

While the second verse voices the title, the song begins, “Said the night wind to the little lamb / Do you see what I see?” And what is seen is “A star, a star, dancing in the night / With a tail as big as a kite.”

A writer for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (see here) explains that the latter phrase “can be interpreted in two ways: as the bright star of Bethlehem that leads the Magi to the baby Jesus—or as the sight of a nuclear missile in flight.” 

But the plain plea of the song is in the last verse: “Pray for peace, people, everywhere.” Sixty years later, that is still a pertinent plea. 

Do you see what I see about the coming global crisis? While there is certainly serious concern about nuclear war in the year ahead, my main fear is much more long-ranging, namely, an increasing concern about climate change and the collapse of the world as we know it. 

My first blog post of 2020 was “Climate Crisis: The Challenge of the Decade,” and beginning on Jan. 25 of this year I have posted a few articles referring to what seems to be an unfathomable crisis because of overshoot.

(To see/review what I have written this year about that, click here to read that 1/25 post, and then at the bottom of that article click on the tag “overshoot.”) 

What can we learn from Habakkuk 3:17-18? 

Earlier this month, a Bible study group of my church studied/discussed much of the Old Testament book of Habakkuk, and on Dec. 12 we shared what we had thought/written about the final verses of that short prophetic book—and some shared their thoughts yesterday in our Christmas worship service.

Here are the words of Habakkuk 3:17-18 from the New International Version of the Bible:

Though the fig tree does not bud

and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails

and the fields produce no food,

though there are no sheep in the pen

and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior. 

(Bolding added)

In reflecting on those powerful words, here is what I wrote to be shared yesterday:

Though global warming continues to worsen 
and sea levels keep on rising,
though droughts increase in severity
and floods become even more destructive,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior. 

Though the world’s economy spirals downward
and standards of living begin to plummet,
though accustomed to luxuries decrease greatly
and hardships significantly proliferate,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Though domestic polarization becomes grimmer
and troubling discord roars across the land,
though worrisome threats of war persist
and rogue nations increasingly rattle their sabers,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior. 

Though civilization’s collapse becomes more imminent
and impending doom seems progressively threatening,
though the future appears increasingly uncertain
and sure hope begins to seem illusionary,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior. 

I am still working on articulating the basic reason for the yet affirmation, but primarily it is due to my faith in the eternal God whom I believe to be the Creator and, yes, the Consummator of the universe. 

As Creation was in a far more distant past than traditionally conceived, so Consummation will most likely be in a far distant future.  

_____

** The story about the writing and meaning of this Christmas song is told by Kathy Warnes here. She reports that Noel Regney, who wrote the lyrics, said that of the numerous renditions of the song his favorite was the one by Robert Goulet, which you can hear here on YouTube.

14 comments:

  1. The first comments today (and the only ones so far) are from local Thinking Friend David Nelson:

    "Thanks for your prophetic update. You help me to continue to trust in the mystery of the sacred that we live inside of. I loved your expanded prophetic poem of Though and Yet."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks much for your comments, David. I appreciate you embracing the intent of what I wrote, and I hope most others will do likewise even though I am afraid some will fail to do so.

      Delete
  2. Thank you for going to the trouble to write a rather pertinent blog on the day after Xmas. I see so many similar sentiments by evangelical Christians on Facebook that I've become a bit cynical about them, reflecting on the 19th-century arguments that religion is a projection of our own humanity onto the big screen of the universe and Marx's specific formulation, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people." I personally live between that insight and my argument that a dumb criticism of religion is that religion is comforting. It should be comforting! If it ain't comforting, there's something wrong with it. I would have to confess that my church's Xmas Eve service this year, for which I read most of the birth stories of Jesus, was most inspiring and comforting. This, even though I think those stories are pure fantasies, except for the reality of a birth to a couple named Joseph and Mary.

    So much of Christianity today in the USAmerica, though, is an opium for people torn between the liberal calls for peace and justice and those of right-wing reaction and jingoism that they're paralyzed, unable to move beyond the private comforts of their faith. I know this is not the case for you. So it is easier to receive your message and affirm your comfort.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anton, sorry to be so slow to respond to your substantial comments, but yesterday was our Christmas celebration with our daughter (who lives here in Liberty) and her family, including Nina, our first grandchild.

      Before getting into the important part of your comments, let me mention two matters for the beginning of your comments: 1) I wrote this article FOR the day after, not ON the day. I'm not like Heather Cox Richardson who usually spends much of the night writing her (daily) "letters." 2) I was a bit confused with your use of the word "similar" in your second sentence. At first, I thought, as did June, that you meant similar to what I had written, but I thought, No way. Then I decided you must have meant that evangelical Christians had expressed many sentiments similar to each other.

      But with regard to your main point regarding Marx and religion, this is a subject I have long been interested in, and I have long thought Marx's words that you cited have usually been misunderstood, especially in the U.S., and maybe especially in the last 50~60 years. Opium has long now been generally understood to be bad and is illegal for general use. But in the 19th century, far from being stigmatized, opium was regarded as a needed painkiller and was widely, and appreciatively, used as such. Thus, Marx calling religion "the opiate of the people" was in itself not a criticism. Rather, his criticism was mainly that religion (Christianity) was not doing more to alleviate the suffering that necessitated opium.

      I happened to come across a helpful article that discusses this issue: "This Christmas, Radical Christianity and Marxism Can Inspire Us to Build a Better World" on the 12/25 website of "Jacobin," the leftist/socialist magazine. (Here is the link:
      https://jacobin.com/2022/12/christmas-marxism-christianity-alasdair-macintyre-jesus ).

      That article is largely about philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (b. 1929) who in 1952 (at age 23!) wrote "Marxism and Christianity." I read some of his writings in graduate school in the early 1960s and perhaps a decade later some of the book just mentioned--and reading the article in the "Jacobin" made me want to read (at least some of) it again.

      Delete
    2. I'm sorry, Leroy, for the confusion in my comment. What I meant by "similar" and what I was referring to was your refrain, "Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
      I will be joyful in God my Savior."
      I meant that I see a lot of similar sentiments, but they, unlike your psalm, do not come with any acknowledgement of the enormous problems facing humanity. And this is why I'm cynical about most such comfortable and self-comforting sentiments but not about yours.

      Delete
    3. Thanks for the clarification, Anton. I did not write the "Yet I will rejoice . . . " refrain; I just used the words from Habakkuk 3:18. So, yes, there was similarity in that it is common for evangelicals to quote Bible verses. What I meant by "No way" was what I had written in the Though statements. I am probably going to post a blog article this month, perhaps my 1001st post (but it won't be on the 15th), on what is meant by Savior/salvation in Habakkuk--and now.

      Delete
  3. I was happy to receive the following comments from my daughter Kathy this morning:

    "Thanks for this blog. I’m finishing up the book, 'Heavenly Man,' again (about a leader of the Chinese underground church). He is a model of the “Though . . . Yet” as he was tortured beyond belief. May we be able to gracefully receive whatever God puts in our hands this year and cling to the joy of the Lord throughout this new year."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kathy, I appreciate you posting these comments. As the man in the book you mentioned, most of the people who shared at Rainbow Church on Sunday morning made personal statements about their experience of "though . . . yet," and they were quite meaningful. When we were discussing this in our Bible study, I said that "bifocal" views are necessary: distant situations need to be seen as well as those that are close--and vice versa. -- I also appreciate your important concluding sentence.

      Delete
  4. Also, local Thinking Friend Vern Barnet sent these comments:

    "Your gloss on Habakkuk presents us with a realistic way to live without despair. Two brief additions to valorize "Though . . . Yet":

    "Huston Smith often said, 'The news of the day is always bad, but the news of eternity is always good.'

    "Functionally, the Christian 'Though . . . Yet' parallels the practice of Amor fati. The fact that Nietzsche advocated a similar attitude should not be too surprising when both the glories and horrors of existence are contemplated."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Vern, for your thought provoking comments. I need to do some reading about the practice of "amor fati," but I think my Jan. 5 blog post will be somewhat related to that.

      Delete
  5. "A wonderful blog, Leroy. Your prayer and mine are the same. We live by trusting God, not ourselves." (From Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson in Kentucky)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks again my Dear Brother and longtime friend from our hometown in Missouri.
    I'm always amazed at your thorough explanation of The Bible and the more in depth meaning of Scripture.
    Thank you Leroy,
    John Tim Carr

    ReplyDelete
  7. I was 12 when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened, and I must confess I have no contemporary memory of it. As I have gradually learned more after that fact, I have been increasingly astounded. For instance, I learned a few years ago that exactly one Russian officer stopped a nuclear war. Fortunately, Russia had a fail-safe system similar to America's, and when a nuclear armed sub was under American bombardment, two of the three required officers voted to launch a nuclear counterattack against the American fleet. The third man stopped them, and the sub allowed itself to be quietly hounded out of Cuba's vicinity. War was that close, but I did not know.

    Now I find out that a popular, bouncy Christmas song had a great depth I never suspected, a meaning that had almost entirely eluded me. Well, as Paul warned, "For now, we see through a glass, darkly; ...." (1 Corinthians 13:12) Another song from that era also recently came back to me, slightly changed, and painfully relevant to our current era. "Eve of Destruction" and Barry McGuire made each other famous with P. F. Sloan's song. Now Anneli Kamfer has an updated version transitioning from Vietnam to Global Warming. You can experience it here: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/eve-of-destruction/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow, what a powerful--and nihilistic?--song! Thanks for sharing it!

      Delete