Walk Together, Children, Don't You Get Weary

I can see where Spurgeon's success might weary a lesser mortal, but most people find success encouraging and gratifying. The Apostle Paul would have been happy to have Spurgeon's problem. Whereas Spurgeon motivated and mobilized a generation or more, Paul was having trouble motivating the Thessalonian Christians to do anything! Some of the believers in that congregation had become lazy. About the only thing they had constructed was a questionable theological rationale for their inactivity. Faced with their idleness, Paul pointed to his own work ethic, hoping, perhaps, that some of these slackers might be shamed into doing something useful.

There were two problems in Thessalonica. Some members of the congregation were not contributing anything to the community, preferring to act in an advisory capacity only. They sat back and let others do the work and meet the budget. The second problem had to do with itinerant ministers. Spurgeon was a preacher extra ordinaire, but for Paul preachers were an extraordinary problem. First-century Christians valued hospitality much more than we do, but there were leeches who took advantage of this, visiting one congregation after another and playing upon the congregation's goodwill. And Paul's advice is blunt: Let's not have people sponging off the congregation! Paul was concerned that ne'er-do-wells, whether within the congregation or visiting from elsewhere, would discourage the active believers from actively doing good. What if they fell prey to the spirit of Ecclesiastes and began considering their work as nothing but "vanity and a striving after wind"? (Ecclesiastes 1:14, RSV)

Paul wanted to encourage the Thessalonians, and Paul's robust spirit could rally fellow believers. In 1 Corinthians, for example, Paul writes, "My beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord...." (1 Corinthians 15:58) In 2 Thessalonians, however, Paul's advice sounds like damage control: "Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right." (2 Thessalonians 3:13) He's trying to stop the blight of laziness from spreading.

Worries that Weary us

I don't have Paul's robust spirit, so I can grow weary at the drop of a hat. I get weary, for example, when I get a letter – as I did this week – asking where to get Mennonite horses! I really don't know! I know that Denise likes to ride horses, but I think she rides Presbyterian horses. Most of the horses I used to ride were non-denominational! I didn't have the heart to tell the person requesting this information that Mennonites have moved on and that many of them are now more interested in Mennonite cruises. Would she be interested in a Mennonite ocean-going vessel?

Such letters produce more amusement than weariness, but there are many things much less amusing that are very wearing. It's hard not to grow weary of war, for example. One looks for signs of faith and hope, but it's hard not to be overwhelmed by the evidence of tragedy and suffering. War is wearing to those of us who live in relative safety, but overwhelmingly wearing to those who live in its midst. Palestinian Christians, for example, have grown so weary of their situation that several years ago they began leaving the country at a rate of a thousand a year, making this minority a ever-diminishing minority. ("War-weary Christians Seek Escape from Holy Land," Reuters, December 17, 2003)

The Church is a rich source of weariness. I get bone-tired weary when church leaders are found to be hypocrites of the most blatant kind, and their public humiliation besmirches the Church for generations. I get weary when Christians forget that God called us to be a community of faith, not a loose confederation of a few hundred people with five hundred opinions!

The old spiritual advises us, "Walk together, children, don't you get weary," but sometimes it's the "together" part that worries and wearies us. We walk at different speeds. Some of us are strollers. Some of us merely saunter. Some of us are speed-walkers. Some of us like to be in charge of the route we're going to take. If some begin walking in one direction, some of us balk and choose the opposite direction, sometimes to be difficult, and sometimes because we don't like being treated like children. If we're all going to act like children, maybe we should get a rope like the ones day-cares use when taking children out for a walk so as to keep them from wandering off!

What Do we Need to Do to Do Good?

The Apostle Paul told the Thessalonians, "Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right." (2 Thessalonians 3:13) He gave similar advice to the church in Galatia: "Let us not grow weary in well-doing...." (Galatians 6:9, RSV), or "tired of doing good". (PHIL)

The Scriptures are full of injunctions to "do good". The psalmist, for example, advises: "Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it." (Psalm 34:14) "Trust in the Lord, and do good...." (Psalm 37:3) The prophet Isaiah said, "Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow." (Isaiah 1:17) Jesus advised us: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you...." (Luke 6:27) Earlier Paul had written to the Thessalonians, "See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all." (1 Thessalonians 5:15) Hebrews tells us, "Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have...." (Hebrews 13:16) Jesus himself was described as one who went about "doing good". (Acts 10:38)

Some of us grow weary of doing good because doing good doesn't appear to do much good! Even Christians who have a fairly focussed sense of what constitutes "doing good" are subject to "compassion fatigue". It's right about this time, the third week of Ten Thousand Villages sales at our church, when Villages Weariness sets in.

It's also hard for members of a church to agree upon what constitutes "doing good". OMC has agreed that helping resettle refugees is good, and that fair trade is good ... but that's about it! Oh, we agree that educating our children in the tenets of the faith is a good thing to do, but only if doesn't interfere with the ten other things in which we enroll our children.

Some weariness is personal. Ruth Bell Graham, the daughter of the famous evangelist, has written a book entitled In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart (2004), in which she tells her own tale of brokenness. Sharing her struggles parenting three children through out-of-wedlock pregnancies, her struggles with drug use and bulimia, her battle with depression and flirtation with suicide, and her disappointment over her two divorces – her third marriage faltering even as she was writing the book – some readers grow weary just reading the book!

Mother Teresa: A Troubled Saint

Some weariness is personal, some is personal and public, as in the case of Mother Teresa. The recently published book, "Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the ‘Saint of Calcutta,'" has troubled some believers. It turns out Mother Teresa was "not the God-intoxicated saint many of us had assumed her to be". (Carol Zaleski, "The Dark Night of Mother Teresa," First Things, May, 2003)

In letters she sent to her spiritual directors, Mother Teresa writes, "I am told God loves me – and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul." (James Beverley, "A Doubting Teresa?" Faith Today, November/December, 2007) "In my soul," she writes, "I feel ...that terrible pain of loss – of God not wanting me...." (Beverley) In 1959 already she wrote, "In my heart there is no faith – no love – no trust. The work holds no joy." (Beverley)

I'm not sure why Mother Teresa's weariness comes as a surprise to some. Firstly, much of this came out four or five years ago when Rome put her life under a microscope during the process of preparing for her beatification. Secondly, she didn't hide her struggles; she shared her "dark night of the soul" with a number of people, and wrote them down. And thirdly, anyone with even a passing knowledge of the history of Christian spirituality knows her experience is not unique. Among the writings of saints through the ages are many accounts of spiritual darkness. It is an ancient doctrine that God dwells in inaccessible light, the divine glory veiled in a dark "cloud of unknowing."¹ Among the monastic writers who flourished during the twelfth century, divine darkness was an essentially cheerful idea. One of the monastic writers (William of St. Thierry, 1085-1148) delighted in the human incapacity to see God's presence.

Mother Teresa's namesake, St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), wrote, "Do not believe I am swimming in consolations; oh, no, my consolation is to have none on earth." She said that her own trial of faith was "like being enclosed in a dark tunnel". One could also cite St. John of the Cross, who taught that even in the desolate dark night of the soul God is present, purifying the soul of all passions and hindrances. One could mention many others. Jesus endured his Gethsemane, and from the cross cried the most forlorn cry of all: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46)

Critics have been quick to jump on Mother Teresa's doubts, citing her as an example of the price one pays for blind religion (Beverley), and it is true that her dark night was particularly deep – and long, lasting decades! However, I find her example inspiring! One can only marvel that she persisted in radiating invincible faith and love while suffering inwardly from the loss of spiritual consolation.

It's easier for us to think that Mother Teresa was somehow shielded by spiritual endorphins, because that lets us off the hook. How else can we explain this woman who threw her lot in with the poorest of the poor, sharing their meagre diet and rough clothing, wiping leprous sores and enduring the agonies of the dying for so many years and without respite? She has much to teach us about fidelity. Love should not be confused with mere feelings. Feelings burn out easily; they can be manipulated. Love is not a passing affection of the heart, it's an act of the will. Mother Teresa learned to deal with her predicament by converting her feeling of abandonment by God into an act of abandonment to God – an incredible witness to the fidelity for which the world is starving.

On the wall of Shishu Bhavan, Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta, hangs what have become known as "The Paradoxical Commandments". They are often attributed to Mother Teresa, but they were written decades earlier by someone else (Kent M. Keith, 1968). Nonetheless, she must have appreciated their wisdom in the light of her own deep commitment to Christ. To paraphrase a few of them:

When people are unreasonable, illogical, or self-centred,
Love them anyway!

If you do good, and people accuse you of ulterior motives,
Do good anyway!

If the good you do will be forgotten tomorrow,
Do good anyway!

(Lucinda Vardey, Mother Teresa: A Simple Path, 1995)