For some time, my favorite word to study has been the Greek word thlipsis. It has a broad range of meanings and applications. It literally means “pressure,” and is often translated “tribulation” in the New Testament, but a few cases it refers to the “anguish” of childbirth. In verbal form it can mean “to squeeze” or “to pinch.” As an adjective it can even mean “narrow,” as in the path Jesus tells us to walk.

My fascination with this word consists mainly in the implications of seeing life as one big thlipsis. If we pray that Christ would increase, and we would decrease, it naturally follows that in answering this prayer God would put us through tight spots to help the process. He reduces us so that Christ can increase.

Some of us God might even have to put through a big, final thlipsis at the judgment if he finds us still too full of ourselves to wedge through the pearly gates. I think I’d prefer the narrow road beforehand to that eternal embarrassment.

Dennis Kinlaw says it best: “When you come across an opportunity to sacrifice yourself, to lay down your own life,  you ought not run.” What most resembles death and pain to us just may be the birth pangs of new life, the Life.

“One should seriously inquire if to live in a world permeated with God  and the knowledge of God is something they themselves truly desire. If  not, they can be assured that God will excuse them from his presence.  They will find their place in the “outer darkness” of which Jesus spoke.  But the fundamental fact about them will not be that they are there, but  that they have become people so locked into their own self-worship and  denial of God that they cannot want God.”

“Whereas the primal relationship of man to man is a giving one, in the state of sin it is purely demanding. Every man exists in a state of complete voluntary isolation; each man lives his own life, instead of all living the same God-life.”

From The Communion of Saints, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

And this from a man who truely gave.  “Greater love hath no man than this…”

“In a very unique setting over Earth’s colorful horizon, the silhouette of the space shuttle Endeavour is featured in this photo by an Expedition 22 crew member on board the International Space Station, as the shuttle approached for its docking on Feb. 9 during the STS-130 mission. Image Credit: NASA -> You can download the full size (5349×4012!) image here.”

(via Monoscope)

“So blindly do we all rush in the direction of self-love, that every one  thinks he has a good reason for exalting himself and despising all others in  comparison.”

-From Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin.

How easily would I take these words of Calvin and bring them to my neighbor and say to him, “Look! See! This is what I have been trying to tell you.”  All the while ignoring the finger that points at me. Κύριε Ιησού Χριστέ, Υιέ του Θεού, ελέησόν με τον αμαρτωλόν.

“The philosophy of living with an underlying motive of doing  everything for one’s own personal peace and comfort rapidly colors  everything that might formerly have come under the headings of  “right” and “wrong.”  This new way of thinking adds entirely new  shades, often in blurring brushstrokes of paint that wipe out the  existence of standards or cast them into a shadow that pushes  them out of sight. If one’s peace, comfort, way of life, convenience,  reputation, opportunities, job, happiness, or even ease is threatened,   “Just abort it.” Abort what? Abort another life that is not yet  born. Yes, but also abort the afflictions connected with having a  handicapped child, and abort the burdens connected with caring  for the old or invalid. Added swiftly are the now supposedly thinkable attitudes of aborting a child’s early security in his or her  rights to have two parents and a family life; aborting a wife’s need  for having her husband be someone to trust and lean upon; aborting   the husband’s need for having a companion and friend as well  as a feminine mate; aborting any responsibility to carry through a  job started.”

-From Affliction, by Edith Schaeffer.

“In a world apart from God, the power of denial is absolutely essential if  life is to proceed. The will or spirit cannot-psychologically cannot-sustain  itself for any length of time in the face of what it clearly acknowledges to be  the case. Therefore it must deny and evade and delude itself.”

-From Renovation of the Heart, by Dallas Willard.

A key psychological insight.  The world is blind to its sin because it could not possibly be see it and remain as it is.  The world is blind by definition.  The options are either to deny or to repent, there is no third.  I am terribly afraid of this.  I hear the words of Nathan the prophet: “you are that man.”

“Remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you  talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption   such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare….  There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.   Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations-these are mortal, and  their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom  we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit-immortal horrors   or everlasting splendors.”

-C. S. Lewis

One of my favorite Rembrandt paintings of all time, The Three Crosses.  The various groups, from Pharisees to soldiers to weeping women vividly portrays the equally varied types of relational stances toward the cross.  In the midst of controlled realism, Rembrandt’s faces always point the viewer toward the inner man.

“Professor Donnison has given  a vivid illustration of this from personal experience in the Navy. He  speaks of days spent in a transit camp where men were coming and  going all the time and no enduring bonds were formed between them.  In that camp, he says, one had to nail everything down or it would be  stolen. Then he speaks of life on board ship on active service. The same  men are his companions. But now he knows that any of his fellow crew  members would without hesitation risk his own life for one of his mates.  The same men were involved in both situations: in one they were bound  together by a common purpose; in the other they were not. In the two  different social contexts, their personal behavior was totally different”

-From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, by Lesslie Newbigin.