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Tag Archives: Discontentment

Politic Hunting.1 (Thomas Adams)

13 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Thomas Adams

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Discontentment, Esau, greed, Hunting, Politic Hunting, Thomas Adams

Thomas Adams is known as the Puritan Shakespeare. He was a friend of the great English poet and fellow clergyman, John Donne. His collected sermons are little known, and so I will endeavor to provide some brief summaries of such from time to time. 

Here is the first sermon from the first of three volumes, “Politic Hunting.” 

The text is 

Esau was a cunning hunter, and a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, welling in tents. Gen. 35:27

Adams’ general strategy is to take the two appellations of Esau: cunning hunter, and, man of the field, and think through the implications of such phrases. He will move beyond the biography of Esau and consider these matters more broadly.

As he moves into his subject, he begins with the observation that there is nothing wrong with hunting: 

Hunting in itself is a delight lawful and laudable, and may be well argued for from the disposition that God hath put into creatures.  He hath naturally included on kind of beasts to pursue  another for man’s profit and pleasure. He hath given the dog a secret instinct to follow the hare, the heart, the fox, the boar, as if he would direct man by the finger of nature to exercise those qualities which his divine wisdom created in them. 

What is best in Adams is often his turn of phrase. It is not always picturesque as it is with someone like Watson; but it is often sharp and clear: 

The world is a glass, wherein we may contemplate the eternal power and majesty of God.

This is an understanding which is not unique to Adams, but it is a concise statement of the proposition. 

Following a warning that we not turn lawful recreations into excessive habits, Adams turns to the concept of a “cunning hunter”. He takes to mean, “plain force is not enough, there must be an accession of fraud.” 

Adams then notes the distinction between hunting wild beasts and caring for domestic animals. “This observation teacheth us to do no violence to the beasts that serve us.” 

He then proceeds to consider five sorts of sinful traits which he sees exampled in Esau and shown in the world. The underlying event is Esau coming in from the field and selling his birthright for a pool of soup:

Artwork by Nicolas Tournier, ESAU SELLING HIS BIRTHRIGHT TO JACOB FOR A POTTAGE OF LENTILS, Made of oil on canvas

(Nicolas Tournier)

First, those of a ravenous, intemperate appetite (couldn’t Esau have just waited a few minutes to eat something other than Jacob’s stew at the cost of his birthright?). A sinful greed. 

Speaking of those with intemperate appetites:

That intemperance is not only a filthy, but a foolish sin. It is impossible that a ravenous throat should lie near a sober brain. 

They have digged their grave with their teeth.

Second: his wrong estimation of things: 

And what, O ye Esauites, worldings, are momentary delights compared to the eternal! What a mess of gruel to the supper of glory! The belly is pleased, the soul is lost. Never was any meat, except the forbidden fruit, so dearly bought as this broth of Jacob. A curse followed both their feedings. There is no temporal thing without trouble, though it be far more worthy than the lentil pottage. Hath a man good things? He fears to forgo them. And when he must, could either wish they had not been so good, for a longer possession of them. 

…Nothing then can make a man truly happy but eternity. Pleasures may last a while in this world; but they grow old with us, if they do not die before us. And the staff of old age is no pole of eternity. 

Third, discontentment: 

There are too many, that, in a sullen neglect, overlook all of God’s favors for the want of one their affections long after. 

Fourth: an obstinate adherence to his folly. 

It is wicked to sell heavenly things at a great rate of worldly; but it is most wretched to vilipend them. (Vilipend: to regard as worthless, despise)

Fifth, he was perfidious. 

And so the summary of Esau: 

In all these circumstances, it appeareth that though Esau was subtle to take beasts, he had no cunning to hunt out his own salvation.

Discontentment and Persuasion

09 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Persuasion

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Discontentment, Persuasion, Poetry, Rilke, Spectors

Introduction: Discontentment

We’re not very much at home
In the world

Duino Elegies, Elegy One
Rilke
Rilke at the Chateau Muzot

When I was six or so, I gathered up the horde of coins collected as tribute from my parents. On the corner, just down the block from my home, was a toy. Along the back wall, to the left, tucked between this-and-that, Mr. Spector had positioned a bin of toys.

One toy in that bin mattered. A whistle: you could move a plunger in-and-out to hear a change in tone. I knew the chance to make such a silly sound would increase my happiness, alleviate my boredom, and lead me to a state of peace.

I traded my pocketful of metal for a package full of plastic wonder.

At home, safely in my room, I opened the package and put the whistle to use. In that moment, I learned painfully what is known to everyone who has lived upon this world for any length of time and with any degree of observation, that reality refuses to conform to expectation. What I want and I what I get rarely match.

I was not the first to come to this bitter realization.

It seems even the Divine are discontented with the planet. In a text which probably goes back 3500 years and was found inscribed upon burial chamber walls of various Pharaohs (Sethos I, and Ramesses II, III & VI) it is disclosed that the gods had it in for humanity.

Re, the Sun god, gathers the court of gods and reveals a terrible turn of events, “Mankind, which came into being from my eye [don’t ask], has devised plans against me.” [Beyerlin, 9]

What the created beings plot against the gods, or why the plot exists, is not disclosed. We are only left with the bare accusation of “devising plans.” The gods, easily upset, decide that eradication of humanity is the only solution to devising. Therefore, Hathor, the goddess of intoxication, is called for to kill human beings.

Re sends out minions to get some red ocher. The “slave girls” are given the task of making beer. Re mixes the red dye into the beer and pours the red beer at a designated location where Hathor decides to kill off the devisers.

Hathor goes to the place and gets herself drunk. Crushingly, stupidly drunk. She got so drunk that she could not even “perceive” mankind. And so we lived.

An Akkadian story tells us that the gods, having created human beings to do work which the gods didn’t want to do, became annoyed with the noisy human beings doing this and that and making so much noise that the gods decided it would be best to send a flood and drown the whole lot of rabble rousers.

And when human beings have thought themselves divine, the idea has been to formed to remove at least some of humanity as a way of making the world right. The lot of these monsters from Hitler to Pol Pot to Stalin to Mao have thought the solution for the world’s ills is killing “those kinds of people.” If you were dead, I would finally be happy.

Fortunately, world-conquest and the death of billions is beyond the hope or at least the ability of most people. You and I simply can’t eradicate everyone from the face of the planet so that we will be happy.

If we can’t kill everyone who gets in our way, we will need a different tool to make others conform to our expectations: this is called persuasion.

Persuasion comes in different degrees and with different purposes. There is one persuasion to get a slighter bigger tip from a customer, another persuasion to get people to stop smoking. And there is an extreme form of persuasion which treats certain thoughts and certain actions as a disease to be quarantined or cured.

It is especially crystalline and clear when the state or a mob (which is just the state without a good story about legitimacy) becomes involved, because the state and the mob have powers which approach the terror of the gods. The mob may burn your house and the state may confine your bones.

And this is all done to make the world just a little bit better, a little more comfy. After all, we’re trying to feel at home. And if building a better house for me requires burning down your house, pillaging your crops and driving your family into exile, it is worth the effort.

At least that is one of the stories that history tells again and again.

Some people must be removed, like weeds which have grown up in the wrong place. You can’t make a weed better. Some people must be cured, like a rose bush being pruned for winter and readied for spring.

I would like to go back to the quotation from Rilke at the top of this chapter, “We don’t feel very much at home in the world.” But Rilke’s line actually adds a little bit more to the statement:

We’re not very much at home

In the world we’ve expounded.

It is the world as we have interpreted it. It is not the world as it actually is. Who has any idea how to even find that place. It is the world as we have come to understand it: as our thoughts and desires and expectations have worked experience into a comprehensible shape.

That makes our attempts at persuasion ironic: We don’t merely feel out of place in the world. We feel out of place in the world as we have come to interpret it, read it, explain it, understand it.

The problem then – at least as Rilke has it – is not that the world is the wrong shape, it is that we are the wrong shape. And so we try to refashion the world into a shape which conforms to our error.

In the end we commit a fraud upon ourselves and thus live in a prison of discontentment.

Our discontentment then demands further alterations to the world. I become discontent with you. I persuade you to be different. You do become different. I get what I want; and the world is no better for it.

But that has never stopped mobs and states and jerks and petty tyrants and the rest of us from trying to not merely nudge but to remake the world so that it will fit into our pre-ordained design.

Epilouge

And last for a confession.

When I took the whistle from the package, I was quite careful to open only the corner and to slip the whistle free. When I became disappointed, I wanted my coins back. And so I carefully returned the whistle to the grocer.

I persuaded someone with a cash register to take the toy back. I didn’t feel any better – as you can tell from my dredging up this personal stuff for examination in a completely different century from the time it was originally performed.

My actions would be a petty theft by means of fraud. It is a form of persuasion, too.

It is also described by California Penal Code section 484a:

(a) Every person who shall feloniously steal, take, carry, lead, or drive away the personal property of another, or who shall fraudulently appropriate property which has been entrusted to him or her, or who shall knowingly and designedly, by any false or fraudulent representation or pretense, defraud any other person of money, labor or real or personal property, or who causes or procures others to report falsely of his or her wealth or mercantile character and by thus imposing upon any person, obtains credit and thereby fraudulently gets or obtains possession of money, or property or obtains the labor or service of another, is guilty of theft.

The statute of limitations has long ago run, so I can’t be prosecuted. And being a minor, I supposedly lacked the capacity to commit a crime. So I have that much going for me.

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.4

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Contentment, Discipleship, Jeremiah Burroughs

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Contentment, Discontentment, Jeremiah Burroughs, Study Guide, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment

The previous post in this series may be found here

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment

Study Guide 4, Pages 51-60

1. What is the fifth element of contentment?

2. Burroughs contrasts two ways of thinking about a circumstance. How does a carnal heart think (this would be the automatic response of most people)? What does one who lives contentedly think?

3. Note: Naomi and Marah mean pleasant and bitter. Since God has called to a bitter rather than a pleasant place. Consider for a moment the lines of the contemporary song, Blessed Be the Name.

Blessed be Your name

When the sun’s shining down on me

When the world’s ‘all as it should be’

Blessed be Your name

 

Which line of that song fights against contentment for the Christian? Contrast that with Burroughs’ use of the words pleasant & bitter to describe our circumstances.

Continue reading →

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.4

05 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Jeremiah Burroughs

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Affliction, Biblical Cousneling, Contentment, Discipleship, Discontentment, Jeremiah Burroughs, Preaching, Puritan, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, Trial

The previous post in this series may be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2013/09/26/the-rare-jewel-of-christian-contentment-3/

The quietness of contentment does not require that a Christian not beg mercy of God. The quietness is not a bare resignation and stoicism. However, that does not mean the quietness of contentment means nothing. There is a necessary quietness, which Burroughs describes by eight aspects.

First, the contented Christian does not complain about God: The Christian who complains of God’s determinations is like the Israelite complaining of God’s provision in the wilderness. The Christian must not be like the “rabble [with] a strong craving” who pined for Egypt and complained of God (Numbers 11:1-6).

Second, the contented Christian may be grieved but not vexed and fretting.

Third, the Christian cannot claim a true contented quietness when his spirit is in a tumult “like the unruly multitude in Acts”.

Fourth, a disturbance which draws us from our necessary relationships and duties does not flow from a quiet contented heart.

Fifth, the quietness of contentment

Is opposed to distracting, soul-consuming cares.  A gracious heart so esteems its union with Christ and the work that God sets it about that it will not willingly suffer anything to come in to choke it or deaden it….It will not on any account allow an intrusion into the private room, which should be wholly reserved for Jesus Christ as his inward temple.

Sixth, the quietness of a contented heart, “is opposed to sinking discouragements.”  Why should a Christian ever suffer a sinking discouragement under trial? “Indeed, if his people stand in need of miracles to bring about their deliverance, miracles fall as easily from God’s hands as to give his people daily bread.” God can solve any problem we face, if it be for our good. “God would have us to depend on him though we do not see how the thing may be brought about; otherwise we do not show a quiet spirit.”

Seventh, while we may seek lawful, fitting means to escape trial, we may not resort to sin.  “Thus do many, through the corruption of their hearts and the weakness of their faith, because they are not able to trust God and follow him in all things and always. For this reason, the Lord often follows the saint with many sore temporal crosses.”

Eighth, while we may call out to God to bring us deliverance (Psalm 69:1), we may not rise against God in rebellion.  Burroughs notes such rebellion is often tied to melancholy, what we could call depression:

Especially this is the ase with those who besides their corruptions have a large measure of melancholy. The Devil works both upon the corruptions of their hearts and the melancholy disease of their bodies, and though much grace may lie underneath, yet under affliction there may be some risings against God.

 

 

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.3

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Jeremiah Burroughs, Puritan

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Affliction, Biblical Cousneling, Contentment, Discipleship, Discontentment, Jeremiah Burroughs, Preaching, Puritan, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, Trial

The previous post in this series is found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/the-rare-jewel-of-christian-contentment-2/

Christians often think that contentment and quietness of heart mean a passive resignation to trials. They may feel guilty when they express pain – even in prayer.  Burroughs explains that the quietness of heart which marks contentment does not mean a dull passivity:

[The quietness of contentment is not opposed]
To a due sense of affliction. God gives his people leave to be sensible of what they suffer. Christ does not say, ‘Do not count as a cross what is a cross’; he says, ‘Take up your cross daily’. It is like physical health: if you take medicine and cannot hold it, but immediately vomit it up, or if you feel nothing and it does not move you-in either case the medicine does no good, but suggests that you are greatly disordered and will hardly be cured. So it is with the spirits of men under afflictions: if they cannot bear God’s potions and bring them up again, or if they are insensitive to them and no more affected by them than the body is by a draught of small beer, it is a sad symptom that their souls are in a dangerous and almost incurable condition.

Thomas Brooks, in his book The Mute Christian Under the Smarting Rod agrees that a stoical silence is not the mark of godliness, but rather a diseased soul:

And so Harpalus was not at all appalled when he saw two of his sons laid in a coffin, when Astyages had bid him to supper. This was a sottish insensibleness. Certainly if the loss of a child in the house be no more to you than the loss of a chick in the yard—your heart is base and sordid, and you may well expect some sore awakening judgment. This age is full of such monsters, who think it below the greatness and magnanimity of their spirits to be moved, affected, or afflicted with any afflictions which befall them. I know none so ripe and ready for hell as these.

Aristotle speaks of fish, that though they have spears thrust into their sides, yet they awake not. God thrusts many a sharp spear through many a sinner’s heart, and yet he feels nothing, he complains of nothing. These men’s souls will bleed to death. Seneca reports of Senecio Cornelius, who minded his body more than his soul, and his money more than heaven; when he had all the day long waited on his dying friend, and his friend was dead, he returns to his house, sups merrily, comforts himself quickly, goes to bed cheerfully. His sorrows were ended, and the time of his mourning expired before his deceased friend was interred. Such stupidity is a curse that many a man lies under. But this stoical silence, which is but a sinful sullenness, is not the silence here meant.

The Lord himself was “troubled in his spirit” when thought of his betrayal (John 13:21; see, also, John 13:27).

What then may we do if we feel the pain of a trial?  Certainly it is not a mark of Christian contentment to hide ourselves  from God. If that were so, we would need to tear out the Psalms by the root.

I cried out to the LORD

And he answered me from his holy hill Ps. 3:6.

 

And what of the Lord pouring his heart in prayer while he agonized in the garden. Must we call this sin?

 

Burroughs also notes that unburdening our heart to a trusted fellow Christian is no sin (James 5:16, “Confess your sins one to another). Indeed, we could not bear one another’s burdens if we did not know they existed (Galatians 6:2). As Burroughs writes, “Likewise he may communicate his sad condition to his Christian friends, showing them how God has dealt with him, and how heavy the affliction is upon him, that they may speak a word in season to his weary soul.”

 

Thus, a contented quiet heart is not a heart which takes no notice of its circumstances, nor a heart which bears pain in solitary silence.

 

Finally, it is not contrary to contentedness to seek to be delivered from our trials. David escaped from Saul (1 Samuel 19:10); Jesus spoke of believers rightly escaping from trial (Matthew 24:15-20). Paul requests his legal rights (Acts 22:25). Burroughs notes:

It is not opposed to all lawful seeking for help in different circumstances, nor to endeavoring simply to be delivered out of present afflictions by the use of lawful means. No, I may lay in provision for my deliverance and use God’s means, waiting on him because I do not know but that it may be his will to alter my condition. And so far as he leads me I may follow his providence; it is but my duty, God is thus far mercifully indulgent to our weakness, and he will not take it ill at our hands if by earnest and importunate prayer we seek him for deliverance until we know his good pleasure in the matter. Certainly seeking thus for help, with such submission and holy resignation of spirit, to be delivered when God wills, and as God wills, and how God wills, so that our wills are melted into the will of God-this is not opposed to the quietness which God requires in a contented spirit.

 

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.1

04 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Contentment, Jeremiah Burroughs, Meditation, Prayer, Puritan, Uncategorized

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Contentment, Discontentment, Gnosticism, Jeremiah Burroughs, Renewing the Mind, Romans 12:2, Romans 8:13, Secret, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, Transforming the Mind Prayer

Burroughs, whose circumstances did not foster contentment (as I am reading in the wonderful biography of Burroughs by Phillip Simpson), looked in Paul’s words found in Philippians 4:11-12:

11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.

Burroughs first notes the route to contentment. This is perhaps the most troubling aspect — I know no one who would not receive contentment (sure some will not want to become static and mouldering, but that is not Paul’s meaning here) — is that contentment is not a gift without gaining. Contentment must be learned.

He here keys in on the words which we have translated as “I have learned the secret”. Burroughs’ translation merely had the word “instructed” and thus he needs to bring out the matter: Contentment is not something to be found easily — it is a secret (Burroughs uses the word “mystery” as we would use the word “secret”). Thus, we must learn this mystery, this secret:

Contentment in every condition is a great art, a spiritual mystery. It is to be learned, and to be learned as a mystery. And so in verse 12 he affirms: ‘I know how to be abased, and I now how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed.’ The word which is translated ‘instructed’ is derived from the word that signifies ‘mystery’; it is just as if he had said, ‘I have learned the mystery of this business.’ Contentment is to be learned as a great mystery, and those who are thoroughly trained in this art, which is like Samson’s riddle to a natural man, have learned a deep mystery. ‘I have learned it’-I do not have to learn it now, nor did I have the art at first; I have attained it, though with much ado, and now, by the grace of God, I have become the master of this art.

Here is the beginning of the matter: it is an art, a skill to be learned; not merely a state to be enjoyed.

What does this mean?

First, since it can be learned, it will require the transfer and assimilation of some knowledge. Second, it can not merely learned, but it can also be taught. Third, such knowledge is not immediately apparent — it will be acquired as a secret (though it is not a secret because it cannot be had by all — this is not Gnosticism. It is a strange sort of secret. It is a secret in plain sight.).

In short, contentment will take effort.
We can further infer: Since discontentment is a sin (in that discontentment is a judgment that God has done wrong by so ordering the world), contentment is a necessary aspect of sanctification. Therefore, this knowledge cannot be truly had without the Spirit: “If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13). It is not a mere matter of information; it is a matter of information which transforms the mind (Romans 12:2). And so this matter of contentment will take prayer and meditation.

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