Thomas Paine–the pro-revolutionary patriot and pamphleteer–was certainly no Christian and no fan of Christianity. But I find this sentence to be sound Christian thinking:
Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, ‘If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace'; and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.
Of course, Paine was rallying the country to independence from Britain, but his words can apply equally well to other ventures. Is there some institutional change you know must happen but have been putting off for fear of your own hardship? Is there a family confrontation that must take place but you are waiting for someone else to handle it and let you off the hook? Is there a difficult decision to be made in your church but you are happy to let the bomb explode in some other lap? Is there a need in the world, a crisis in your city, or a cause in your country that you are waiting for others to take up without you? Are you quietly saying to yourself, “If there must be trouble, let it be in someone else’s day”?
Christian virtue is far different. If you or your family or your church or your movement or your nation are in trouble now, should not your heart cry out, “Better that I face this instead of my children”? If suffering is to come, if hardship is to ensue, don’t you want to be summoned to the task rather than someone else? Aren’t you eager to be a “generous parent”?
May God awaken a sense of duty for all who to ought to face trouble now that others can be at peace later.
Hezekiah was just the opposite of course:
(Isa 39:7-8 NIV) And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” {8} “The word of the LORD you have spoken is good,” Hezekiah replied. For he thought, “There will be peace and security in my lifetime.”
Not Hezekiah’s best moment.
Beautiful post. Thank you.
Thanks for being willing to risk trouble, disaproval, etc. in the rescent sanctification debate.
Keep standing for the truth in love…love for this generation and the next.
One word comes to mind…OUCH!
Beautiful. Thanks for that.
But are Paine’s words an example of sound Christian thinking/virtue or just wise common grace thinking?
“Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
This post is relevant to the political environment in America for at least the last couple of decades.
This is a lovely post; as the father of four I must say I’ve uttered similar words in prayer many times. And to compare small things to great, surely some form of this thought must have been present in Jesus’ mind in the Garden of Gethsemane.
However, I feel there is a potential in this otherwise noble thought that could be against the spirit of Christianity. It’s a topic C.S. Lewis deals with in Abolition of Man (I believe): the desire of one generation to have power–even if only the power of grateful recognition–over subsequent generations.
You can see how such a desire could develop in a malign way. Part of its malignity is the promotion of an illusion that future generations might be spared the encounter with pain and trouble. The latter thought it surely contrary to Christian belief, based as it is on Christ’s embrace of the way of the cross. It would be a form of folly to imagine that we could ever spare our children the encounter with his cross. Moreveor, to eliminate the possibility of affliction (assuming such a thing is even within human competance) would eliminate one of mankind’s most intimate connections with Christ.
As I get older, this seems to me one of the harder truths of being a father.
This might capture the problems in the church more completely than almost everything I’ve seen. Following what you say commits two theological errors. First it elicits a theology of glory in that that we can choose to be heroic. Second a mixing of the kingdoms in thinking that in that our struggle we will build the kingdom to peace. Every generation is confronted in the struggle. But we are not the heroes and God’s kingdom comes without our feeble effort at protecting it.