Post Holes

Digging post holes requires a rudimentary rhythm. Lift the post hole digger as high as your arms will allow, drive it into the ground with as much force as you can, spread the handles so that the blades pinch and grab dirt, then lift as much earth as you can out of the hole and drop it a foot or so away from the hole you are digging. A couple of weeks ago I was in this rhythm digging a few post holes for a friend who needed a fence for a horse.

In the middle of this effort the friend came to me and said, “Trent, I really need to ask you a question.”

I answered, “Okay,” as I pulled up a digger full of dirt.

They said, “This has to do with a difficult decision that I have to make, and I was wondering what you thought.”

I stopped digging and began to focus on the situation that was being described to me. When they had finished narrating the predicament my friend said, “Wait, there is another.”

After listening to my friend’s questions I was suddenly and completely exhausted, not by the labor of post holes, but rather I was exhausted by the complications and implications of my friend’s stories and questions.

The questions were moral questions. One had to do with a brother who was living in an unseemly manner that wanted to have dinner with the friend that was talking to me. My friend was trying to listen carefully to scripture, but they were having a hard time squaring the “Jesus, friend of sinners” gospel with the “expel the immoral brother from your midst” gospel. I was really tempted to give my friend a quick answer, but wisdom won out for once, thank God. I just listened to the struggle to find the right path that would honor God and show love to someone who, though bound up in a mess, was still a friend.

The second one was much harder for me to listen to. In fact, this one has bound up my brain for quite a long while. It is almost single handedly responsible for the absence of any blog posts for over a month. You may ask, “What was it? What could your friend describe that could bind you up with spiritual constipation for over a month?”

Well, I’ll tell you. The second situation involves a family that we both know, although my friend knows them much better than do I. This family has been a paragon of Christian family virtue for as long as any of us can remember. We are talking about elder, deacon, minister, wonderful children, mission trips and all the rest of the trappings that one would associate with a Christian family that has it together. They have mentored other families. They were models of what we were all supposed to be doing.

Now I know that all humanity is fallible. I know this well, but this is not the part of the story that burdens me. No, that is yet to come. You see, 10 or so years ago one of the members of this family approached their minister about resigning because they were struggling. Their work for the church was not giving life like it once was, and their family life was very strained. The minister said that sometimes we have to put our feelings aside and do the job that we are called to do.

That last sentence is what has me troubled. So, after receiving that advice this person kept on trudging along. Apparently they did not do anything to regain the life and joy that they once had. They lived for 10 years in a state of spiritual anesthesia, and when the opportunity came to feel again they took it. I am not minimizing a person’s responsibility to seek and find the treasure that is Christ. I am not saying that this person was right in what they did. I am just saying that 10 years is a long time to be numb.

It troubles me that I have given that advice; be of good cheer and keep trudging on; life is hard; don’t expect life to be fair because it isn’t. I have taken that advice; I have trudged on through difficult situations when I could not feel anything; I have kept going by rote and by habit when I really wanted to quit. In fact there are things in my life right now that I am doing because I am duty bound to do them. They aren’t bringing life to me right now and there are parts of my life that are under severe strain. Do I quit some of those things? Which ones? Or, do I just keep trudging on hoping that things will suddenly get better. Do I keep driving the post hole digger into the ground in a rudimentary rhythm?

This advice to keep trudging along seems like it comes up short. I suppose that I feel this way because I am very suspicious of spiritual numbness. I don’t think we were ever created to be unfeeling and spiritually anesthetized. We were never created to be numb.

Okay, so we are not created to be numb. So what? Now what? Nothing in any of what I have said is new. It is obvious that numbness is not what God wants from his children, but what happens when the only options we can see are either obey and be numb or disobey and feel? I know that this is an artificial situation with a great big fallacy right in the middle of it. I know in my heart of hearts that these are not our only options, but sometimes I am unable to see the other options. Apparently, I am not the only one that can be blinded to a third option.

It seems to me that believers ought to be people of a third option. Life in Christ ought to be vibrant and vivid. It ought to make us cry out with joy. So, why do so few of us find that treasure, and fewer still can show others where to find it?

Here is where I stop. This frustrates my friends because they say that this is where the sermon ought to start. All I can say to them is this; remember, that when you are finished working your post hole digger in that rudimentary rhythm all you have is a hole.