‘But seeing the Lord, are you not subdued?’
Plus: pope jokes, the hope of Advent, and more
Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here’s this week’s post. It’s the last one I promise to write this year—maybe some inspiration will strike, or maybe I’ll put together a little reading list, but my official plan is to take the next two weeks off and be back on Wednesday, January 8. In the meantime, you can still avail yourself of this discount:
A take I haven’t written elsewhere
‘But seeing the Lord, are you not subdued?’
Nearly a year ago, at the end of fantastically cranky and entirely correct post about restaurants that preeningly overshare about their compensation structures, I told readers here about a friend of mine whom I’m calling Mark. I don’t remember why I did it exactly then, but when I went back to find that post I was briefly stumped because it was not, as I’d thought, timed for Christmas.
This time it will be. As longstanding readers may recall, Mark is a missionary from India to China. I met him in 2006, visited again in 2009, and have been supporting his work monthly for about 15 years.
It’s hard to overstate how worthwhile that work is. While what he’s doing at any given time varies as different needs and opportunities come his way, Mark has lived as if Matthew 25 were a checklist. He has fed the hungry, hosted the stranger, visited the sick. He has played with orphans, helped college students learn English, ministered in house churches, cared for lepers in isolated colonies, and baptized new believers.
I joke that supporting Mark is the best bang for my buck—but it’s not really a joke. Mark is literally doing the Lord’s work.
Since the pandemic, Mark’s home church in India hasn’t been able to support him as much as they once did, and right now he has a big bill of about $1400 owed to a service that handles his taxes and other documentation in China. I’m hoping some of you might help him pay it.
You won’t get a tax write-off, but I’ll do you one better: If you are willing to commit to sending Mark at least $20 a month for at least a year—or a one-time gift of at least $240—I’ll give you a free one-year subscription to my paid content here on Substack.
How to do it:
Reply to this email (or if you didn’t get the email, leave a comment on this post)
I will give you a U.S. mailing address to send your check(s)
Send me some basic verification (a screenshot or photo) of your giving
I will apply the free subscription in a timely manner1
Why to do it:
Well, the free sub, for one. And the gospel service to lepers and orphans, for another. But also: Because you likely can. Is there a better way you’re going to use that money?2
If you’re an American with internet access and leisure time to read my stuff, probably you can spare this, and the realities of global cost-of-living differences mean the help you’ll give to Mark will be way more than the cost to you.
Or take it from Chrysostom, who indicts us all:
“For I was an hungered, and you gave me no meat.” For though He that came to you had been your enemy, were not His sufferings enough to have overcome and subdued even the merciless? Hunger, and cold, and bonds, and nakedness, and sickness, and to wander everywhere houseless? These things are sufficient even to destroy enmity. But you did not do these things even to a friend, being at once friend, and benefactor, and Lord. Though it be a dog we see hungry, often we are overcome; and though we behold a wild beast, we are subdued; but seeing the Lord, are you not subdued?
Will I make a habit of asking you to give money to strangers?
No, just this one. Also, hi, newer subscribers! This is not my normal thing, but bear with me. Regular programming will resume in January.
Intake
I’m watching more TV than usual right now: Silo and Bad Sisters
Kumquats! I’d never had them before. They’re delicious, both alone and muddled in sloe gin sours
The Devil to Pay: A Faustian Drama, by Dorothy Sayers
“Hospitals gave women meds during birth, then reported them for positive drug tests,” by Shoshana Walter for The Marshall Project
“Guilt and sorrow and obedience and love,” by Kate Lucky for Christianity Today
“Against Christian civilization,” by
for First Things. Chewing on this one, which sent my way. Might have to write about it in the new year.“The push for puberty blockers got ahead of the research,” by
for The Atlantic“Remember that you were born,” by
for
Ronald Reagan famously declared that freedom is “never more than one generation away from extinction.” The fact is, almost everything may only be one generation away from extinction. Look, for example, at how only one or two generations of smaller families and higher ages of marriage and childbirth have made large families far more impractical—fewer grandparents; older parents for in-family childcare; fewer cultural resources; a tacit social norm that large families are a little bit odd. It would not matter if family life had been the same for thousands of years or a few generations; one break is all it takes to make it seem impossibly distant to us.
“How America created the enemy it feared most,” by Azam Ahmed for The New York Times
Only the Americans dared to encroach into the region, and in doing so created the very insurgent stronghold they feared most. The United States dropped more than 1,000 bombs in a place it never needed to be. Instead of winning hearts and minds, the Americans unwittingly sowed the seeds of their own demise here in the Waygal Valley—just as it did in much of Afghanistan—then stayed for years to reap the harvest.
“There is faith in humor,” by Pope Francis for The New York Times
[There was a] rather vain Jesuit who had a heart problem and had to be treated in a hospital. Before going into the operating theater, he asks God: “Lord, has my hour come?” “No, you will live at least another 40 years,” God replies. After the operation, he decides to make the most of it and has a hair transplant, a face-lift, liposuction, eyebrows, teeth … in short, he comes out a changed man. Right outside the hospital, he is knocked down by a car and dies. As soon as he appears in the presence of God, he protests: “Lord, but you told me I would live for another 40 years!” “Oops, sorry!” God replies. “I didn’t recognize you.”
I was disappointed to learn at the end that this is just a book excerpt, and therefore my image of the pope calling up the Times opinion desk because he had some jokes that really needed telling was, alas, imaginary. The one about himself gets recycled for every pope and president, but the one about John Paul II is very good.
Output
New work:
The imperative in Syria | Defense Priorities (newsletter)
Not sure that this should really be categorized as “new work,” but the X/Twitter AI tool is apparently free now, and I gave it the suggested prompt to depict me based on my account, and uhh apparently I tweet like I’m 65+?
Newly relevant work:
Bah, humbug! But I’ll echo the joyous strains | Christianity Today, December 2023
Why are we so cynical about peace on earth? | Christianity Today, December 2022
The hope and darkness of Advent | The Week, December 2019
Coming to this as we do, two millennia after the fact, it is difficult—for me, anyway—to feel this wait as real. I can’t pretend I don’t know the end of the story. I’ve heard its spoilers my whole life. And I am not by nature sentimental: The Christmas tree in our home is a concession to my marriage, not something I’d bother with on my own. (Among my earliest memories is when, at 3, I took my mother up on her threat to cancel Christmas if I continued to refuse to dress for the Christmas Eve service—and considered it a fair bargain.) But while I struggle to share in the Advent wait for Christ’s first coming, I have no such difficulty participating in its dual anticipation of his return. And the yearning that entails is a yearning I think we all share, whether or not you’re a Christian in an Advent tradition, or even a Christian at all.
It is, most basically, a yearning for justice. I don’t mean the unsatisfactory justice we habitually encounter, the justice of courts and cops and prison. I don’t mean anything so empty as retribution, which as the subject of yearning nearly always takes the uglier form of revenge.
The justice Christians hope for in the return of Jesus is far more than that. It is no sterile terror, no cruel machine that gnaws the innocent and guilty alike. It is the sense—more than that, the reality—that all is as it should be. It is as small as a perfect dinner with loved ones and as grand as the greatest wrongs of history coming under divine judgment, their victims finally, fully made whole. It is God dwelling among his people on a renewed Earth, where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” It is the redemption of everything, not only humanity, as “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”
If you already have a paid subscription, we can extend it by a year, or I believe I can give a year to another person of your choice.
I know this is very late, but I would be interested in making a donation to Mark if possible.
Bad Sisters is So good. I sadly no longer have Apple TV so have not watched beyond the first 4 episodes. Does Mark works with Lepers in India or South India perhaps?