Ditching the Stick Figures, Keeping the Saints

I'm going to change up my Substack again.

The big takeaway: Going forward, Stick Figure Saints will be have a new name. I’ll share it in the next post.

Why (another) change?

I guess you could say the pendulum in my head keeps swinging. When I came up with the Stick Figure Saints theme, I thought that it might be a good way to make my thoughts on the Christian life easy to digest and free of pretense.

But over the last couple of months I’ve been struck by the gravity of the times that we’re living in. Church attendance is way down, compared to a couple decades ago. National politics and world events remain tumultuous.

Cartoons don’t quite rise to this moment. At least not the amateurish kind I make.

And they didn’t fit with what I found myself writing, either. If you read my last post, Bonhoeffer and the Martyr’s Method, you might have noticed I didn’t slap a cartoon on it. That wasn’t going to fit Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s story.

And I don’t think saucer-eyed 2-D characters will fit with where I want to go moving forward. Because while I haven’t written many posts in the last couple of months, I’ve done a lot of thinking. I’ve been thinking about how we experience God’s Word. And I’ve been thinking about how Christians might respond to the ever-stranger world we live in. Here’s a rundown:

Not Just Reading the Word, But Memorizing It

This been on my mind for a while. It’s a quote by Donald Whitney from the book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life:

Merely hearing or reading the Bible . . . can be like a short rainfall on hard ground. Regardless of the amount . . . of the rain, most runs off and little sinks in. Conversely, meditation opens the soil of the soul and lets the water of God’s Word percolate deeply. The result is an extraordinary fruitfulness and spiritual prosperity.

By meditation, he means contemplation of God’s Word. What he’s getting at is that to reflect on God’s Word throughout your day, you need to know some of it by heart.

I know many Christians who read their Bibles daily, or nearly so. This is a much better option than not opening the Word up regularly. But if Whitney is right, and Bible reading really is like a short rainfall on hard ground, we could read a lot of Scripture and still be disappointed in the spiritual fruit we see.

The problem is that memorizing Scripture is hard and tedious. If you suggest, even gently, that Bible reading isn’t enough, you’re going to be brushed off by a lot of Christians, even committed ones. Push that idea hard and you’ll be dismissed as a legalist.

And yet.

What if a lot of the time we’re spending in the Bible is like a short rainfall on hard ground? Consider this possibility for a moment. It could help explain what we see: a lot of believers who have an intellectual grasp of biblical principles but disappoint when it comes to character.

What can help is a practical means for Christians to commit God’s Word to memory. As odd as it might sound, this was built into Christian worship for centuries. If you don’t believe me, look into the history of psalm singing.

God’s people singing (and memorizing) God’s Word together: that’s going to be one of my main themes going forward. Prayer will be another. And there’s no better springboard for prayer than having Scripture stored in your heart.

The Bible Says to “Work With Your Hands.” Why?

Speaking of upcoming themes, here’s a passage that’s on my mind:

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

Today’s mindset says that you only work with your hands if you have to. And as soon as you land a job that allows you to leave that kind of drudgery behind, you do.

A recent layoff reminded me of the value of physical work. This past spring I lost my job as a curriculum writer for an education company. I had a family to support so I couldn’t waste time trying to land the perfect job. I started loading trucks for UPS in the early morning. Right away I was much happier than I’d been when I had my “better” job.

I don’t believe that physical work is inherently holier than toiling away at a desk. Nor do I think the job change I experienced would make everyone happier. But I do think we all need to do some kind of work with our hands. Whether or not it’s paid, this kind of work grounds us and humbles us. It pulls us out of the alternate reality of screens and abstractions.

Working with our hands doesn’t automatically connect us to God. But I do think it can help us to be more receptive to his presence.

In future posts, I’ll delve into why.

Grounded in God’s Great Mercy

Contemplating God’s word and working physically are things that we do. But Christianity is ultimately rooted in what God has done for us in his Son Jesus Christ. You could memorize the whole Bible. And you could physically work yourself to the point of collapse. To know God and everlasting life, you’d still have to receive his gift of grace.

With that in mind, and until the next post, here’s 1 Peter 1:3 to reflect on:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Store up God’s Word in your heart. Find some work to do with your hands. And most of all, know God’s mercy in our Lord Jesus Christ.