A Matter of Perspective

Scripture: I Corinthians 7

A few years ago, I found myself in a conversation with a farmer who had recently given up on an enterprise he had pursued to supplement his income: operating a "corn maze." You know how this works: the farmer mows a complicated labyrinth through his high-standing cornfield; non-farmers stand in line and pay money to wander around in it; and this experience confirms everything farmers have always suspected about non-farmers.

When I asked this farmer why he'd abandoned his corn maze business he squinted, got a sour look on his face, and shook his head slowly. "It was those city folks," he explained. "They'd get in there, get lost, and then get our their cell phones and call 911. They'd tell the emergency dispatch operator that they'd gotten turned around and needed help. Sometimes they'd ask her to send a helicopter. Then the operator, who had misplaced her sense of humor about this a while back, would call me yelling about how I shouldn't allow idiots into my corn maze."

I think this offers an irresistible metaphor for the human condition. We waste time, and sometimes stand in line for the privilege of doing so. We mistake movement for progress. We go around in circles. We charge forward only to realize we have rushed backward. We search for markers and signs and instructions with little success. We grow confused and frustrated and even panicked about our sense of disorientation. And, when we finally get desperate enough, we seek the wrong help from the wrong sources.

In his letters to the Cornithians, Paul tries to explain how the followers of Jesus should make their way through the maze of human existence. The letters are dense with instruction, often conveyed through potent aphorisms and poetic imagery. As a result, verses from these letters are routinely recited at weddings, intoned at funerals, etched into jewelry, printed on bumper stickers, and otherwise taken out of context. This gives rise to a problem, because we can become so enamored with Paul's language that we lose sight of his overarching message.

In my view, the overarching message of these letters is this: becoming a follower of Christ entails a fundamental change in perspective. Becoming a follower of Christ means accepting a new vision, a new understanding, a new set of priorities. Of course, this proves so challenging for us because we inhabit the same old body in the same old world and tend to see things through the same old eyes in the same old ways. But Paul assures us that, through Christ, we can change our perspective. This change has three dimensions and I think it worthwhile to tease them out and consider them separately.

One of these changes in perspective is reflected in Paul's words in the seventh chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians. In this passage, Paul recognizes a fundamental truth about human psychology: when life gets hard, we tend to assume that no good can come of it until things change. Or, to put it differently, we often think of difficulties as detours on our voyage to a better place.

Of course, this has some truth to it. The current world financial crisis has had devastating effects on millions of people. Still, our leaders assure us that eventually things will improve. They tell us we need to have hope--in part, because historical experience and economic principles suggest we should; but, more importantly, because it is impossible to drive an economic recovery on the stale fuel of resigned despair.

Unfortunately, however, some of us will face hard circumstances that will follow us throughout our days on earth. Debilitating health problems, terminal illness, the death of a loved one, addiction--these are not minor detours in our lives; these are unwelcome traveling companions that will accompany us all the way to our final destination. We can, of course, find comfort, peace, and hope in the promises that our final destination offers--indeed, this constitutes part of the perspective that we bring to things as Christians. But in I Corinthians 7 Paul offers a still different perspective on life's most trying circumstances.

Paul introduces this perspective by inviting us to consider the situation of the slave. This is a brilliant device, because it acknowledges the radical uncertainties of human existence. After all, Paul knew that some slaves would win their freedom and would find themselves on dramatically better and altogether different paths. But others would not. Others would die just as they were born--as slaves.

Paul assures us that even in that most desperate of situations--even when a force beyond our control takes over our lives and governs every minute of our day-to-day existence--there is something we can do. We can be in that place with God. We can be in that place knowing that we are freed from the burdens of loneliness (for God is with us), and emptiness (for God will fill us), and melancholy (for God will love us), and sin (for God will forgive us).

This is not sugar-coated blather. Nothing here promises to take the pain away. And this is not a call to complacency. Paul invokes the example of slavery to make a point about what is possible even in the most constraining of circumstances and not because he favors indentured servitude. This is an invitation to a different understanding. It is an invitation to stop pounding on the wall because we feel lost, to climb up out of the maze, to find our way to higher ground, and to look at things from a new perspective.

In his book Thinking It Through, Kwame Anthony Appiah of the Princeton University Center for Human Values provides this wonderful metaphor, perhaps the Ivy League version of my Chelsea, Michigan corn maze:

"Imagine you are lost in a large old city in Africa or Asia or Europe [and you'd] like to know where you are. The trouble is that just when you think you have found your way out of one maze of alleys, you are plunged into another. If, in your wanderings, you climb to the top of a tall tower, you can look down on the streets you have been lost in and suddenly everything begins to make sense. You see where you should have turned one way but went another; you realize that the little shop you walked past, with the cat in the window, was only yards away from the garden in the next street, which you found hours later. And when you get back down into the maze you find your way easily. Now you know your way about."

It is ironic, isn't it? It is precisely when we feel most lost that we're most likely to become fixated on where we are. But that may not offer any answers to us. We may only be able to find answers by stepping very far back and looking at a much bigger picture. Paul, shall we say, invites us to the view from ten thousand feet.

This raises two additional points about perspective. The first is this: we cannot stay in the tower. We have to come back down into the streets to put our new perspective to use. There is a great line in a work by one of my favorite theologians--Johnny Cash. He has a song with the refrain, "You're so heavenly minded you're no earthly good." We don't want to be "so heavenly minded" that we're "no earthly good." The whole point, after all, is for us to do all we can to bring God's kingdom to earth, as it is in heaven.

Our new perspective gives us a better sense of where we've been, where we are, and where we should go. It helps us navigate life with an improved sense of direction. And it grants us the understanding to assist others in their travels.

Eileen Lindner, of the National Council of Churches, tells a story about an experience she had at, of all places, a Jiffy Lube. While the oil in her car was being changed, Lindner wandered into the shop's waiting room. She looked around in vain for something to read but finally spotted a thick booklet. She writes:

"I started to turn through it and I realized it was the manual you study when you are getting your boat driver's license. [A]s I leafed through it I saw a section that said, 'What to Do When Boats Encounter Each Other at Open Sea.' I thought that was interesting. Here on terra firma we have lights and lanes and signs, and it does not work out that entirely well. How do they do it on open sea? I started to leaf through the book, and it said there are two kinds of craft: one has access to great power; it can accelerate and decelerate, power throug waves, change direction, and come to a stop just where it wishes. It has engine power and control. The other kind of craft is dependent on natural elements: human muscle power for paddling and rowing, tide and wind in the sails, sea current and human striving. These two crafts are known respectively as 'privileged' and 'burdened.' The text went on to say, 'When the privileged and the burdened encounter each other in the open sea, the privileged must give way if the burdened is ever to make safe harbor.' I thought to myself, 'Who wrote this thing? Mother Teresa? Dietrich Bonhoeffer?' I turned to the front and to my surprise the author listed was the New Jersey Department of Transportation. Now I ask you .... how is it that the New Jersey Department of Transportation knows that when the privileged and the burdened encounter each other, the privileged must give way if the burdened is ever to make safe harbor--and the Church of Jesus is having a little trouble with the concept?"

That leaves me with my last point about perspective, and a little boating story of my own. So here is my final point: unlike the experience of the traveler in Appiah's parable who climbs to the top of the tower, our new perspective won't give us a perfect understanding of how to work our way through the maze. We'll see the big picture but not the whole picture. And we're human, so we'll still make wrong turns, walk in circles, and lose our sense of direction from time to time. Occasionally, we'll even pray for a helicopter and sometimes--just sometimes--God will answer us with those "helicopters" we call angels and miracles.

But we can never allow our perspective to serve as a justification for pride. We can never let our assurance become arrogance. There is just too much, way too much, that we do not know.

And so here is my boating story. A number of years ago, I spent many weekends sailing with a Methodist minister friend of mine. As we sailed, we spent most of our time talking about boats and fishing and jazz music and the weather. Sooner or later, though, our conversations almost always drifted toward matters of theology.

One evening we were returning down a channel from a sail in Lake Erie. We approached a drawbridge, which was up, but my friend turned his boat and circled in place. As we circled, he kept a close eye on a high tower that stood at the base of the bridge. I didn't understand why we hadn't proceeded under the bridge and so asked my friend what was going on.

"Well," he said, "the watchman in the tower will signal when it is safe for us to go through."

Still a bit puzzled, I asked "Don't you need to sound your horn or flash your lights so he knows you're waiting?"

He smiled. "No, he knows I'm here. He's always watching. And he knows what I want. I don't need to do anything to tell him. So he'll let me know when the time is right."

"What if you don't see him when he signals?" I asked.

"Don't worry," he replied. "He'll keep signaling until I get the message."

I remained a bit mystified. "But the bridge is up," I said. "I don't see how it could be unsafe to go under it."

"That's right," he responded. "You don't see. But he does."

And, at that moment, a massive freighter came under the bridge from the other side. After the huge ship had rumbled past us, a light flickered in the tower, and the distant signal told us all we needed to know. So we headed safely home, this having completed our theological discussion for the day.

Sometimes we find our way through the maze without much difficulty. But often, in some lives very often, we discover that we have arrived at one of those lost, confusing, disorienting places. And occasionally it turns out that we'll be spending quite a bit of time there.

Our faith gives us a new perspective on these experiences. It lifts us up to higher ground. It gives us insight to navigate our way. And it assures us that we can say, as the patriarch Jacob said on one dark and lonely night when he slept with a rock for his pillow, lost in a spiritual labyrinth of his own: "Surely, the Lord is even in this place. And I did not know it."

Amen.