When You Don't Know

“Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is – what is good and pleasing and mature.”

Romans 12:2 (Common English Bible)

              My wife, Grace, and I celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with an eight-day Caribbean cruise. That was in November of 2012 – four months after beginning a new ministry that took me from the Philadelphia area to Delray Beach, Florida. The last day was a sea day, the ship making its way back to Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Placing an assortment of oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip cookies on a plate someone approached me, thrusting his hand toward me for a handshake, and said, “Hello Dr. Hood.” Naturally, I was startled. I am on a cruise ship of nearly 3,000 strangers. Who could possibly know me? The stranger continued, “I am a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Delray Beach. I saw you board the ship. I’ve been watching you during this cruise. I wanted to see what kind of man you were when you didn’t know you were being watched.”

              That is a good question for any of us. What kind of man, what kind of woman are we when we don’t know we are being watched? This question reminds me of a presidential race several decades ago. Suspicion whirred around one candidate, suspicion about his private life and fidelity to his marriage vows. The candidate boldly told the press, “Follow me. Watch me!” Apparently, he didn’t believe they would. They did. And he was caught being unfaithful to his wife. That was the end of his presidential run. What kind of man, what kind of woman are we when we don’t know we are being watched? It is a good question.

              The apostle Paul teaches us in his letter to the Roman Church that each of our lives are being molded and shaped by one of two forces, either by the world or by God. The world has its patterns and desires which would shape our lives and God has another pattern and desire for us. Fortunately, says Paul, we have a choice in the matter. It is a matter of where our attention is focused. Attention to the values and priorities of the world will result in feelings of scarcity, a fear that there is simply not enough to go around. Our response becomes one of struggle – wrestling with others to ensure our fair share. Attention to God and God’s values and priorities results in concern for others and generosity. The world will create a man or woman that is selfish, self-centered, and fearful. God creates a man or woman that is secure in God’s care and embodies hope for the future. Again, teaches Paul, we have the freedom to choose.

              The Christian life is a life lived in, through, and for God. Attention to God through regular prayer, reading the Bible, and intentional practices of obedience to what we hear in scripture increasingly conforms us to the image of Christ. Neglect of these things thrusts us into a default position of being conformed to the brokenness and disintegration of the world. Over time, we become someone who lives in the dark, fearful that someone will see what we are ashamed of. The apostle Paul is urging the church to recognize the negative and destructive forces of the world that seek to grasp us and shape us. “Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world,” writes Paul. Rather, “be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” That is accomplished by living into a relationship with God. It is then we are not ashamed of what others see when we don’t know we are being watched. My conversation with the man on the ship ended that day with his gentle and gracious comment, “I look forward to you being my pastor, Dr. Hood.”

Joy,

In the Silence We Hear, in the Stillness We See

The following meditation was written by Doug Hood's son,

Nathanael Hood, MA, New York University

“My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content. Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore.” 

Psalm 131 (Common English Bible)

Since it began earlier this year, the global COVID-19 quarantine has had some truly remarkable effects on nature and the environment. Earlier this month an international team of scientists announced that the sudden halting of, among other things, factory production and car usage has resulted in global carbon emissions dropping by 17%. All around the world this reduction has revealed itself in shocking, unexpected ways. The perennially smog-drenched skies of Los Angeles are clean and blue for the first time in many people’s memories. The sediments traditionally churned up by Venetian boats have settled so completely that animal and plant life have returned to the city’s formerly mud-choked waterways. In Delhi—the most polluted city on earth—pollution has dropped so drastically that residents can now see the stars at night. I’ve personally experienced the effect this quarantine has had on New York City: for the first time since moving to Brooklyn almost three years ago I can actually smell the salt water of the Atlantic ocean.

Writer Julio Vincent Gambuto has described this period as the “Great Pause,” and indeed it seems as if the entire world is holding its breath. But it’s not just the environment that’s paused, it’s life itself for billions of people. Jobs have been lost, leaving countless families in financial limbo. Close-knit communities have been disrupted as people have been forced to abandon public gatherings. Parents have been stressed as schools have closed, forcing them to provide 24/7 childcare even while working. Marriages have been strained and tested as some couples have been separated by hospitalizations and others cloistered together in tiny living spaces for months on end. And for those self-isolating in quarantine, the days themselves have become a blur, the days running into weeks, the weeks running into months. Is it Monday, Wednesday, or Saturday? March, April, or May? What does it matter when they all seem the same?

Yet this pause need not be a negative one. In a recent sermon, Rabbi David Edleson of Temple Sinai in South Burlington, Vermont explained thusly: “I think it is very tough for many if not most of us just to sit still, just to BE home, to be present and to be content. This is a spiritual opportunity for growth. For stopping the focus on what we can’t do, and finding ways to be more content doing nothing, or doing simple things with those with us.” Indeed, the need for peace, silence, and nothingness is baked into the very DNA of the Abrahamic faiths whose God rested on the seventh day of creation. Our scriptures are all filled with visions of quiet and calm, of sabbath rests and high holy days, of fasting and contemplation. When Jesus calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee, he rebuked the very winds with the word “peace.” Perhaps this “Great Pause” isn’t a curse but an opportunity to draw closer to God.

Psalm 131, one of the shortest psalms in the bible, provides one of the most striking visions of finding contentment in times of stillness and quiet. One of the fifteen Songs of Ascent—psalms believed to be sung by worshippers traveling to Jerusalem during pilgrim festivals—it celebrates calming oneself as an act of surrendering one’s pride before God, and with it one’s anxieties about the present and future. This ego-destruction frees us from the illusion that we can control our destinies, and that we are therefore responsible for the unexpected catastrophes and uncontrollable set-backs in our lives (a delusion common in America’s up-by-the-bootstraps culture). By submitting ourselves to the stillness of God, we release ourselves from psychological self-bondage. In this way we find a contentment in peace that is healing, not distressing as we rest in a pause that is holy, not destructive.

Joy,

Stuck Like Stockdale

The following meditation was written by Doug Hood's son,

Nathanael Hood, MA, New York University

‘Now, compelled by the Spirit, I’m going to Jerusalem. I don’t know what will happen to me there. What I do know is that the Holy Spirit testifies to me from city to city that prisons and troubles await me. But nothing, not even my life, is more important than my completing my mission. This is nothing other than the ministry I received from the Lord Jesus: to testify about the good news of God’s grace.”

Acts 20:22-24 (Common English Bible)

On September 9, 1965, naval pilot James Bond Stockdale was shot down while flying a mission over North Vietnam. Forced to eject from his disabled plane, Stockdale parachuted down into a village where the inhabitants brutally beat him and turned him over to the North Vietnamese as a prisoner of war. For the next seven-and-a-half years he was held in the Hỏa Lò Prison—the notorious “Hanoi Hilton”—where he held the dubious honor of being the most senior naval officer in captivity. During this time he and his fellow captives (including future senator John McCain) were savagely tortured, starved, and interrogated. Their treatment was so severe that inmates took it for granted that they’d eventually be broken through torture and forced to make anti-American statements. New arrivals were coached by other prisoners to do whatever it took to survive. “But you first must take physical torture,” they were solemnly warned.

As an officer, Stockdale’s captivity was particularly brutal; when he was repatriated in 1973 as part of Operation Homecoming he couldn’t stand upright or walk. But he nevertheless maintained what little composure he could, implementing a code of conduct for his fellow prisoners and routinely disfiguring himself so he couldn’t be used for North Vietnamese propaganda. Reflecting on his captivity in later years, Stockdale explained his mindset to business writer James C. Collins for his book Good to Great. He said that the prisoners who didn’t survive the Hilton were the optimists, the ones who believed that they’d be rescued or freed in no time. He explained that the key to withstanding extreme hardship was brutal realism: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” [Emphasis added] Collins would term this seemingly contradictory duality of hope and realism as the Stockdale Paradox.

Around the world, millions, if not literally billions, of people are finding themselves in another form of captivity while under quarantine for COVID-19. The physical, mental, and psychological effects have been staggering. According to federal studies binge drinking among those trying to self-medicate has skyrocketed. Many living alone have found themselves trapped in impromptu solitary confinement. Domestic violence has exploded around the world and with it a new wave of divorces and separations. Unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression have thrown the lives and welfare of tens of millions of Americans into chaos, anxiety, and disarray. And with so many governments, both local and federal, domestic and international, treating the pandemic with a hands-off attitude exacerbated by widespread distrust of the scientific establishment, the global rate of infection doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

To weather this storm, we Christians need to take a good, hard look at the Stockdale Paradox. We will not be able to pray this away, and neither will the virus suddenly vanish overnight. It will take great discipline and fortitude to make it to the other side. For guidance, we can turn to the Apostle Paul, who in the book of Acts racks up one of the most prominent records of suffering in scripture, being arrested, imprisoned, and shipwrecked numerous times. Paul was never deterred from his calling to spread the Gospel, but neither was he unrealistic about its cost. While preparing to depart for Jerusalem in the twentieth chapter, he explained that he fully expected another round of imprisonment. That was the harsh reality. But the hope that tempered it—the hope Stockdale would insist on almost two millennia later—is the grace and strength of Jesus Christ. May we find the same strength and comfort as we steel ourselves for the worst to come.

Joy,

Rethinking Sabbath

The following meditation was written by Doug Hood's son,

Nathanael Hood, MA, New York University

"Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. A woman was there who had been disabled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and couldn’t stand up straight. When he saw her, Jesus called her to him and said, “Woman, you are set free from your sickness.” He placed his hands on her and she straightened up at once and praised God. The synagogue leader, incensed that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, responded, “There are six days during which work is permitted. Come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath day.” The Lord replied, “Hypocrites! Don’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from its stall and lead it out to get a drink? Then isn’t it necessary that this woman, a daughter of Abraham, bound by Satan for eighteen long years, be set free from her bondage on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 13:10-16)

The January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake was one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the last decade. The 7.0 magnitude quake demolished huge swathes of the countryside and multiple cities, destroying or damaging a quarter million homes and with them upwards of 316,000 lives. Millions of survivors suddenly found themselves homeless and forced to sleep out in the street or in makeshift shanty towns with little access to drinkable water. The lack of proper sanitation and hygiene led to the first major cholera outbreak of the modern era, eventually infecting over 800,000 with a disease that hadn’t been seen on the island in over a century. Corpses literally festered in the street as the government scrambled to dig mass graves. Though the international community quickly rallied to provide relief, delays in distribution led to widespread looting and violence among the survivors. But into this hell rescue workers continued to flood, despite the terror, despite the carnage, despite the destruction.

Among these was a six-man delegation from Israel’s ZAKA International Rescue Unit that performed crucial rescue operations in the capital Port-au-Prince. The team was comprised of Orthodox Jews who insisted on being flown out to rescue sites despite it being the Sabbath, the day when traditionally no work is allowed. According to Talmudic sources, there are thirty-nine categories of work prohibited on the Sabbath, many of them necessitated by emergency rescue work like sifting (“merakaid”), demolition (“soter”), and extinguishing fires (“meḥabeh”). And yet these six Orthodox Jews sifted, demolished, and extinguished, taking time off from their work only to wrap themselves in prayer shawls and recite Shabbat prayers. When asked about violating the Sabbath, ZAKA commander Mati Goldstein explained that they did it with pride: “We did everything to save lives [despite Sabbath]…we are here because the Torah orders us to save lives.”

Those familiar with Judaism might recognize this as the fulfillment of “pikuach nefesh”—Hebrew for “saving a life”—a deeply held principle derived from both the Torah and Talmud which argues that the preservation of human life overrides almost every religious rule. For Jews, when human life is on the line it’s blasphemous not to violate God’s commands. Christianity also has the principle of “pikuach nefesh” hard-wired into its DNA, demonstrated by Jesus’ deliberate defying of the religious authorities of his day in the Gospel of Luke by healing a woman crippled for eighteen years on the Sabbath. When challenged by the Pharisees, Jesus publicly humiliated them, pointing out their hypocrisy for taking more care of their animals than their fellow human beings. As Jesus echoed elsewhere in the Gospel of Mark with his declaration that the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath, religious laws exist to help mankind. Mindless zealotry at the expense of people it itself blasphemous.

During this time of crisis, communities of faith from all the world’s major religions are struggling to cope with maintaining their traditions in the face of social distancing orders and quarantines. Christianity in particularly is feeling the sting of isolation: Sunday services are being live-streamed, baptisms delayed, funerals performed without the deceased’s loved ones. We can’t even observe Communion, one of our most important sacraments. Ask any pastor, deacon, or elder and they’ll tell you that the emotional and psychological toll of these restrictions on their congregations is devastating. But perhaps we as Christians can recontextualize these absences as a sacrament in itself. By not gathering in person to worship, we’re slowing the spread of the disease. By staying apart, we’re keeping our communities safe. By not keeping the Sabbath together, we respect the “pikauch nefesh” and the true Sabbath taught by Jesus, the one based in human life and dignity.

Joy,