Relocating To Elfland

“Happiness is . . . a word with multiple meanings. The question ‘What is true happiness?’ can only be finally answered on the basis of the answer to another question: What is the chief end of man? But the age of reason had banished teleology from its way of understanding the world, and so ‘happiness’ had no definition except what each autonomous individual might give it. Each individual has the right not only to pursue happiness but to define it as he wishes. Moreover, there is a further element of pathos in this idea of the right to the pursuit of happiness. Medieval people believed with great seriousness that final happiness lay on the other side of death. They did not expect it in its fullness on this earth. But the methods of modern science provide no grounds for belief that there is anything beyond death. Hence, the whole freight of human happiness has to be carried in the few short and uncertain years that are allowed to us before death ends it all. The quest for happiness becomes that much more hectic, more fraught with anxiety than it was to the people of the Middle Ages.” (Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, pp. 26–27)

“God the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal: Grant this heavenly father, for Jesus Christ’s sake our Lord.”

“Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us, and unto whom thou hast given a hearty desire to pray; grant that by thy mighty aid we may be defended; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“Lord, make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy name: for thou never failest to help and govern them whom thou dost bring up in thy steadfast love. Grant this, &c.”

“The grace of the Word of God is not magic. It is promised to the Church that is required and ready to serve it. If it makes strong what men make weak, good what men make evil, pure what men make impure, that does not mean that it does everything where men do simply nothing, where men perhaps do not stand under this requirement and in this readiness. When we have done all that was required of us, we must add that we are unprofitable servants. But if we infer from this that we might equally well allow ourselves to be idle servants, we are not trusting in the grace of the Word of God. When we do trust in it, we stand under the law of the Word of God which is laid upon the Church; we are active in its service (without the presumption of trying to compel its operation, or the folly of trying to see in its presence our own success).” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, p. 2.765–66)

Once trust is broken (either because it has been violated, or because it is simply being withheld), no amount of rules, protocols, procedures, processes, or other strictures can make for a fruitful relationship. If I am not trustworthy, or if someone refuses to regard me as trustworthy, it is not possible that we should labor together constructively. Lack of trust is, by definition, a wedge between two who would labor together; one must ever be watching the other, ever imposing restrictions and boundaries on the other, for fear of what might otherwise happen. It goes without saying that energy poured into such surveillance is stolen from any tasks the two might attempt together. If it be objected by one withholding trust that his suspicions have rarely failed him, let him ponder that perfect love casts out fear, and that wise discernment belongs to the one, while suspicious paranoia belongs to the other. If productive work is to be done (with all the space for trial and error that this requires), there is much to be said for erring on the side of trust. This is the essence of good faith: not a set of rules imposed from without, but an agreement to trust, to be vulnerable, to think the best of the other, even to “believe all things.”

“God, the strength of all them that trust in thee, mercifully accept our prayers; and because the weakness of our mortal nature can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“Almighty and everlasting God, which hast given unto us thy servants grace by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal trinity, and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the unity: we beseech thee, that through the steadfastness of this faith, we may ever more be defended from all adversity, which livest and reignest, one God, world without end.”

“God, which as upon this day hast taught the hearts of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the light of thy holy spirit; grant us by the same spirit to have a right judgment in all things; and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our savior; who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same spirit, one God, world without end.”

“Precisely in order that he may really appropriate what Scripture has to say, the reader and hearer must be willing to transpose the centre of his attention from himself, from the system of his own concerns and questions (even if he thinks he can give them the character of concerns and questions typical of his whole epoch) to the scriptural word itself.  He must allow himself to be lifted out of himself into this word and its concerns and questions. It is only from this that light can ever fall upon his own life, and therewith the help which he needs for his life.” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, p. 2.739)