What's mine is mine

During September and October, we’ll be stepping into our next Jesus-Centred-Life term looking this time at Money, Possessions and Eternity. Bunyan raises the same issue as Hopeful and Christian pass within sight of the silver mine, dug into the hill, Lucre (meaning greedy for gain in money, profits or goods, often in an ill or dishonest sense). Their would-be guide is aptly named ‘Demas’ (II Tim.4:10), who claims there is no danger, ‘except to those who are careless’. Though Bunyan notes that ‘he blushed as spake’.

But for Hopeful and Christian to visit the mine, they would need to turn off the Path. Christian - perhaps still stung by the memory of Evangelist’s words after being persuaded to turn from the path by Mr. Worldy-Wiseman, counsels against it. By-ends and his fellowship, on the other hand, are happy to do so at the earliest opportunity. Their end wasn’t seen, but it was nonetheless real because of that.

We may feel Bunyan is a bit ‘strict’ in his portrayal of the silver mine. Placing it as he does off the Way, describing the ground as deceitful under them, depicting others as slain, maimed or enslaved. It hinders Pilgrims; and Demas - though he claims to be a Pilgrim who would join them if they would tarry a little - is lined up with Gehazi (II Kings 5:20), and Judas (Matt.26:14-15), both noted for their greed, and willingness to betray their Lord for personal gain. But Bunyan is unapologetic. Standing next to the path is a monument with the tag: Remember Lot’s wife. The warning is clear, for she had been turned into a pillar of salt (a symbol of judgement), ‘for her looking back with a covetous heart’.

This is the issue Bunyan is warning us about. Bunyan, and Christians generally (as we’ll see next term), are not advocates of asceticism, nor are they per se against money, or finance. They aren’t against well-run businesses that create profit. But with one voice we cry against the love of money, and the pursuit of it and all that it can buy, without regard to the effects on our discipleship, and the calling of God on our lives. Christ warns us that we cannot serve both God and money (Matt.6:24). A century before Bunyan published Pilgrim’s Progress, the vicar of Epping (Essex) Samuel Hieron, taught his congregation to pray:

‘Oh let not mine eyes be dazzled, nor my heart bewitched with the glory and sweetness of these worldly treasures … Draw my affection to the love of that durable riches, and to that fruit of heavenly wisdom which is better than gold, and the revenues whereof do surpass the silver, that my chief care may be to have a soul enriched and furnished with Thy grace’.

Another contemporary, William Perkins, wrote that ‘The end of man’s calling is not to gather riches for himself … but to serve God in the serving of man, and in the seeking the good of all men … They which have riches are to consider that God is not only the sovereign Lord, but the Lord of their riches, and that they themselves are but stewards of God, to employ and dispense them according to His will. Yea further, that they are to give an account unto Him, both for the having and the using of those riches, which they have and use’.

Within these parameters, money has always been seen as a blessing and a social good. The hill being mined by the Path is not called ‘Money’ but ‘Lucre’. And when the love of money takes root in our hearts, and gives birth to greed, selfishness, jealousy, pride and avarice, then we court spiritual death. This is Bunyan’s warning, and it is worth heeding yet. After all, it was Jesus who said: ‘where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’ (Matt.6:21).

Questions to ponder:

How would I know if I loved money, and served it rather than God?

What would I do about it if I did?

When Jesus is a means to an end...

Those who are genuine Christians in a Church fellowship tend to find each other out. So do those who aren’t. Mr. By-end, now that Christian and Hopeful are keeping their distance, falls in with Mr. Hold-the-world, Mr. Money-love and Mr. Save-all. They struggle to understand why Christian and Hopeful can’t simply accept them and simply be glad they are on the Path at all. What gives them the right to be so judgemental, just because their ‘Christianity’ isn’t just the same. By-end laments: ‘the men before us are so rigid, and love so much their own opinions … that let a man be never so godly, yet if he jumps not with them in all things, they thrust him quite out of their company’. Thus they congratulate themselves on having a tolerance and open-mindedness that Christian and Hopeful clearly lack!

In one sense the problem with these gentlemen is not what they accept, but what they won’t reject. They won’t reject sin, the world or the devil. They think they can hold to the Way whilst not having to sacrifice, surrender or suffer. Their religion is comfortable, accommodating, inoffensive, easily slipped into the rest of their lives. It is very different from that of Jesus:

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?"

(Matthew 16:24–26)

No matter. By-ends and co. have long since justified their approach to themselves, and to anyone else who will listen. But their ‘allegiance’ to Christ is simply a kind of selfishness, serving their personal advantage and advancement. Going to Church is a good thing (or at least, not a bad thing) to do, and so long as religion serves their purpose, they will gladly walk His way, after a sort. ‘Jesus’ is domesticated, modified, brought to heel, so that it is comfortable, respectable and compatible with worldly gain and profit (it is, in fact, a ‘different Jesus’ they follow, II Cor.11:4). Yet so impressed are they with their approach to Christ and the Church that they can hardly wait to challenge Christian and Hopeful in their narrow-mindedness and extremism.

But Christian and Hopeful do something none of the others have done in this conversation. They turn to Scripture, showing that using Jesus for personal profit or gain is a sure road only to condemnation. From Genesis to Acts, those who have sought to use Christ and the Church for their own ends have faced only judgement and destruction. ‘The man who will take up religion for the world, will throw away religion for the world’. Their ‘faith’ is but a cover for greed and self-centredness. Christ will not be mocked… or used. All is to be brought to the service of Him and His cause. He will not be recruited to further our petty kingdoms and ambitions.

By-ends and his friends are stunned by Christian's response. They had sought to silence Christian and Hopeful with their argument, but in the end, it is they who are speechless. Christian warns that they will face a far greater rebuke in the coming judgement. They are ‘heathenish, hypocritical and devilish; and your reward will be according to your works’.

Christian and Hopeful stride ahead, whilst the other company stagger and fall behind. In the end the difference between true and false faith becomes apparent, and though they may sit in the same congregation, the gulf between them is eternal. For when the ‘Jesus’ we are following is a means to an end, it isn’t Jesus we are following.

Questions to ponder:

When have you seen people try and ‘use’ Christ and the Church for their own (worldly) benefit? How did the Church handle that? What did you think of it at the time? What do you think of it now?

Do you think Bunyan is being too judgemental in this section? Shouldn’t we welcome everyone at Church, irrespective of why they are there?

Only when it's convenient...

One of those who had become a Pilgrim through Faithful’s preaching and persecution was Hopeful, who now joins Christian on the Way, ‘entering into brotherly covenant’. It’s a powerful concept, and one that gives a robustness to the idea of joining in fellowship with other Christians that is sadly lacking in our own day. Covenant is a word we reserve for something of the import of marriage, and the idea that our involvement in a Church family has something of this level of significance is likely to have never occurred to us. Realising it now might have us scurrying for repentance as we consider the ‘looseness’ with which we have sat on even attending Church at times, let alone being so deeply committed to the pilgrimage of others.

Pilgrim’s Progress has often been criticized for underplaying the role and importance of the Church. Reading through this classic again in recent weeks, I’m increasingly unsure this is fair. Undoubtedly, Part II seems more obviously to celebrate travelling as part of a company, and under the care of ‘Mr. Greatheart’, but I am less sure that the place of the Church is quite so lacking in Part I as is often alleged. Not everyone who travels with Christian is genuinely converted, but he is constantly surrounded by other Pilgrims on the Way. ‘Thus one died to bear testimony to the truth, and another rises out of his ashes to be a companion with Christian in his pilgrimage’. Bunyan would not have Christian travel alone.

But one whose confession lacks spiritual reality is Mr. By-Ends. He is from the town of Fair-Speech, and we get a strong sense of its character as we are told of who lives there, among them, Lord Turn-about, Lady Feigning, Mr. Facing-both-ways… But the citizen who bears the most scathing name is ‘the parson of our parish, Mr. Two-tongues’. In case we are in any doubt, Bunyan lays out the over-arching nature of the town: ‘We are always most zealous when religion goes in his silver slippers; we love much to walk with him in the street, if the sun shines and the people applaud him’. Mr. By-ends personifies this attribute exquisitely: ‘I had always the luck to jump in my judgement with the present way of the times, whatever it was…’. In other words, when religion is fashionable, acceptable and even applauded by the world, Mr. By-ends will be found in the pews. But when confessing the Name of Christ, or standing for the implications of that confession ‘goes against wind and tide’, By-ends claims liberty to withdraw from the ranks. Though if he had stayed in his own town, he would have no need, for what he heard from the pulpit would be only the faint echo of all that the world applauded at any rate.

A ‘by-end’ is a subsidiary aim or objective. It has connotations of a secret purpose seeking a selfish advantage. The citizens of Fairspeech have, as their main objective, personal gain, and seek their own promotion. If religion serves that end in any given situation, then they will be religious. When it doesn’t they are as quick to disavow themselves of it. They are those who speak of Christ on Sunday, but not on Monday. They are those who will do ‘mission’ but not ‘evangelism’. Their ‘gospel’ will be framed in terms of whatever the world deems good and respectable, and their doctrine will slip easily into whatever is politically palatable, and socially valued. They are those who are religious in a way that the world finds agreeable (not ‘of the stricter sort’). But because By-ends prizes the acceptance of those around him over his acceptance by Christ, when the two come into conflict, he is quiet and chameleon-like in his religiosity fades into the background. He would use Christ for his own ends, and the Church to serve an ulterior motive. Like a parent who goes to Church to get their child into a local CE School; or perhaps more subtly, the person who has an unspoken transaction with God that if they go to Church, God will ‘bless’ their family… or career… or relationship…

The true Christian will be wary of such as Mr. By-ends (‘a knave in our company’!), and will be justifiably hesitant about cultivating fellowship. ‘If you will go with us, you must go against wind and tide … you must also own religion in his rags as well as in his silver slippers; and stand by him too when bound in irons as well as when he walketh the streets with applause’. When By-ends refuses these terms, which are after all only those laid down by Christ, Christian and Hopeful step back. In spite of By-ends accusations of judgementalism, ’Christian and Hopeful forsook him, and kept their distance before him’.

Questions to Ponder:

How do you think Christian feels about Mr. By-ends’ attitude after everything he (and Faithful) have endured in Vanity Fair?

How can we avoid making Mr. By-ends mistake in ouir approach to Christ? How would we be able to recognise if we had!?

My Supreme weapon is dying

‘Thus came Faithful to his end’.

…which we might mis-interpret as a tragedy, a disastrous miscarriage of justice, a denial of Faithful’s basic human rights. It might well be, but Bunyan paints a different picture. Faithful is honoured by the Church, and taken to the Celestial City, where he is welcomed with trumpet blast, and in victory procession! Faithful’s death is not a defeat, but a triumph.

Let us listen again to Josef Tson as he addresses an interrogator who is struggling to understand his unwillingness to compromise:

‘Sir, let me explain how I see this issue. Your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying. Here is how it works. You know that my sermons on tape have spread all over the country. If you kill me, those sermons will be sprinkled with my blood. Everyone will know I died for my preaching. And everyone who has a tape will pick it up and say, ‘I’d better listen again to what this man preached, because he really meant it: he sealed it with his life.’ So, sir, my sermons will speak 10 times louder than before. I will actually rejoice in this supreme victory if you kill me.”

Later, Tson found out another officer said, “We know that Mr. Tson would love to be a martyr, but we are not that foolish to fulfil his wish.” Reflecting on this interaction years later in a sermon, Tson explained:

“I stopped to consider the meaning of that statement. I remembered how for many years, I had been afraid of dying. I had kept a low profile. Because I wanted badly to live, I had wasted my life in inactivity. But now that I had placed my life on the altar and decided I was ready to die for the gospel, they were telling me they would not kill me! I could go wherever I wanted in the country and preach whatever I wanted, knowing I was safe. As long as I tried to save my life, I was losing it. Now that I was willing to lose it, I found it.”

This is the atmosphere surrounding Faithful’s death. He has found life! This is what lay behind his courageous witness prior to and during his trial; it is what lay behind his willing surrender to death; it is what lay behind the Lord’s honouring of him.

Bunyan reminds us at this key moment that the Lord overrules all things, and held in His own hand ‘the power of their rage’. This is the only explanation he gives for why Faithful is martyred, while Christian is' granted some respite (see Acts 12:1-7). But this is not all he would have us learn.

What else should we take away from this chapter? Comfort. Even if our suffering and death comes in ways that seem unexpected, tragic, painful, unjust or cruel, we can trust that God remains sovereign, that He will clasp us to Himself, and that He will bring us home. ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints’ (Ps.116:15).

This is nothing more than the realisation of Jesus’ double promise concerning His sheep: ‘I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand’. Both the Father and the Son hold us, and not even suffering and death can cause Him to loosen His grip.

For a Christian with their eyes fixed on the New Creation, their hearts rooted in the Heavenly City, and their minds shaped by the hope of the Gospel, death is gain. As Paul famously puts it: I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain’ (Phil.1:20-21). Even when confronted with injustice and death, we are ‘more than conquerors’ (Rom.8:37). These are not simply defeated foes, but they are additionally brought to serve us in our pursuit of Christ.

After all, ‘we live by faith, not by sight’. And wouldn’t we, like Paul, actually ‘prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord’ (II Cor.5:7-8)?

Quesitons to ponder:
How have the last few days refelctions recast how you think about your relationship with others?

What difference does it make when you realise that God is sovereign voer your suffering?