Dearest family,
In Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear, the description of the times as “the winter of our discontent” well characterizes our own culture. I have recently done two messages on ‘the culture of contempt’. I guess Sunday’s message was yet another possible addendum to our summer culture series. The working title of what I spoke about was: How to keep giving thanks on Black Friday, sub-titled, How to be content in a culture of discontent. There’s nothing like discontent for suffocating and silencing our thanksgiving.
We laid a biblical foundation for our discussion, in the teaching of Jesus (Matthew 6:24-34; Luke 12:15-21) and from the epistles of Paul (Philippians 4:10-13; 1 Timothy 6:3-10). I have repeated these references so that you can re-read them and consider their instruction first-hand. Wouldn’t everyone of us like to know Paul’s secret about how to be “content in any and every situation.” The context here is that Paul had received a gift of money from the Philippians through Epaphroditus. He knows what it is to be in need: what it feels like. The fact is that circumstances affect us but the extent to which a PREDICAMENT will affect us is determined by our PERSPECTIVE. How we MANAGE such circumstances will be dependent on what we MIND. Paul was concerned that the Philippians understood the following: that he was sincerely thankful for their gift, but that if it had not come, his life and work would not have been entirely dependent on their provision. He would have remained fruitful and joyful. He wanted them to know that his real sense of need and neglect had not brought with it a sense of discontent that had affected his love for them and relationship with them; the demands and expectations we put on others can bring such discontent to our lives and theirs, when we become so person-dependent. He was actually much more interested in their spiritual advantage than his material support. The supply of his needs NOW was nothing compared to the credit they would receive from Christ when they gave an account of their stewardship THEN.
Together, Paul and the Philippians supply an antidote to discontent. Paul does so through the fact that the gift was not the source of his contentment, and the Philippians, through the fact of their giving, especially since they were poor. They refused to succumb to the priority of their own need and in their giving overcame discontent. “There is one act par excellence which profanes money by going directly against the law of money, an act for which money is not made. This act is giving.” (Jacques Ellul)
Paul said, “I have learned…. To be content…” The word he uses here for “learned” is a technical expression that was used to describe the instruction of initiation rites, implying a severe degree of difficulty, of a course of experience that was not a natural choice. Paul’s learning was not just something he’d picked up through a patchwork experience of tough times and hard knocks. The tense used here is that this learning was a once and for all experience in a definite point of time, which then opened up the possibility of a continuance of this same experience in all circumstances, whether good or bad. Paul puts this experience in the context of our salvation no less. It was the change of heart that salvation wrought that changed his perspective, that taught him how to be content now in whatever circumstance because his life no longer consisted in the stuff, or in the feelings, or in the circumstantial securities.
This means we cannot say that contentment is only possible for those who are thus temperamentally suited: more placid and passive, less demanding, more holy. Contentment is presented as a fruit of our salvation. Contentment is not an elective, not an option. This is why the Puritans called it a “necessary lesson.” And now we understand why Paul stressed it was “through Christ” because he can take no credit for his contentment as if it was particular to his ability or spirituality.
In summary, this is what we can say about contentment from this passage thus far: it is a necessary evidence of conversion, a supernatural and not a natural characteristic and response, an necessary choice because it is an expectation of our heavenly Father. I need to reference the use of one more word, namely the word content. Again, this is a word, like “learned” that Paul rescued from non-Christian usage, for it was the word that described the self-sufficiency of the Stoics. However, Paul changes its meaning for clearly it now has to do with God-sufficiency, but nonetheless, there is an emphasis here on what is truly within him, the resident Holy Spirit, the abiding Christ, the kingdom of God. There is immediate provision for the circumstance and it is within, not because it is self-derived like the Stoics, but Christ empowered like the saints. Paul could handle the freezing temperatures on the outside because of the heating on the inside. The ship was righted in the storm, not because of an array of external ropes and props but because of the ballast within. Paul is separating the Christian attitude of mind here from that of the Stoic: the bite your lip, tough it out, bear it and grin it syndrome. This is not about RESOLUTION but about RELIANCE. It is utterly Christ-generated. This is not about toughing it out, but trusting it out. It is not about how we relate to the circumstance primarily, but how we relate to Christ.
Will you join me in praying that our thanksgiving will never flounder on the rocks of discontent. That like Paul we will realize that contentment is a supernatural and spiritually learned behavior. That we will realize that contentment is not just an issue at times of adversity but a state of heart and mind for all times. Edith Schaeffer described the ingredients of contentment “like the raw fibers that we can weave moment by moment into a fabric of contentment.” On Sunday I suggested some things that seek to tear those fibers apart (complaint, complexities, comforts, complacency, comparisons, competitiveness, compulsions, compromise) but also many things that tighten and strengthen the weave (spiritual death, dependence, devotion, discernment, discipline, discretion, dedication, delight).I have suggested some of those fibers to you; whether discretion or discernment, whether devotion or delight, but I have also suggested some nails that can snare and tag it, like complexity or compromise, like complaint or complacency.
At the end of the day Paul was right. We can be content yet pressing forward for more of God. At the end of the day the psalmist was right. We can be like the deer that pants for water – never dissatisfied but always unsatisfied, because of the desire for God Himself more than anything else. As John Bunyan put it:
I am content with what I have
Little be it or much
And Lord contentment still I crave
Because thou savest such.
Pastorally yours,
Stuart