I miss seeing the dear people I love at church, I miss their smiles, I miss their encouragement, and I miss teaching them the “secret things of God”. This “Stay at Home” order can make for seasons of serious loneliness and afternoons of sad listlessness because we are meant for community. We are relational creatures by nature. God designed us to be with people. So in the meantime, I have been doing a lot of reading, texting people online, video counseling, and being driven half-mad by keeping up to date with social media traffic. While I like being in the know, I don’t enjoy seeing the division and anger that abounds online.

One book I have been reading during this time is called, “A Quest for Godliness” by J. I. Packer. It is a wonderful theological study that details how the Puritan movement between the 1500-1700’s has been completely misunderstood and how useful it was in causing Christ to be conformed in the lives of so many people over the centuries in both Europe and America. Personally, I find this book to be a fantastic read, it may be one of the best books on practical theology I have read in twenty years. But I also must admit, it is quite wordy and takes a few cups of coffee not to nod off in the process of reading it. I am sure that your average person would not have the patience for it, and I am also certain that very few would pick it up and read it. 

The way the American mind works in the year 2020 is not geared for long pedantic reading; we like short sound bites, and passing around catchy memes and quotes. So a book like this would strike the average person as tedious and boring. I am not passing a moral judgement on people, just being honest because I like memes and quotes too. But as a pastor, I have found that if I preach a sermon loaded with heavy theological terms and deal mostly in the realm of high-argumentation I will quickly lose the audience. People in our culture have been conditioned to think in story form, we are drawn to concepts that are more visual than auditory and linguistic in nature. It is just the way it is.

So a book like J. I. Packer’s “A Quest for Godliness” would sooner be left on the shelf than a person would take the time to wrestle through it for hours spent reading. Besides, Netflix is always available at the click of the nearby remote. So I would be naive to think that if I asked you to read this book you would actually read it. I know the average person wouldn’t. So instead of twisting arms I have decided to share some of the nuggets of gold I have found in this book. 

I think as a pastor who wants people to grow in Christ, this book has principles and insights you need to know.

The first fascinating concept I found in reading this book is when J. I. Packer identifies three groups of people that he believes are caught in a “spiritual malaise” and they are in desperate need to have someone wake them up to their condition. Spiritual malaise is a condition of soul-sickness that makes a man or woman apathetic toward grace, and keeps them from growing in Christ. These three groups comprise what I am calling “A Ship of Fools” because they don’t know they are sick.

THE SHIP & THE THREE LIFEBOATS

In this post, I am going to use the metaphor of a wandering ship to describe this group. I love imagining the Christian journey as a crew of people who are sailing on a large ocean schooner with three heavy masts each supporting giant billowy sails. This ship is traveling over a vast ocean hoping to arrive safely in the New Land. If you have ever read accounts of the explorers or watched pirate movies, my wife’s favorite, you are probably familiar with the many dangers, toils and fears that happen at sea, the longing in the heart of the crewman who wants only to see the green grass of land, and the ever present temptation of some of the members to mutiny. Well, by using this metaphor, we are going to see that there are three groups of people that want off the main boat of Christianity because they believe they can travel to the New Land on their own. 

So instead of respecting the captain of the ship, and falling in line with the rest of the crew, each of these mutinous groups grabs their own lifeboat and sets sail leaving the rest of the community. J. I. Packer identifies them as “restless experientialists”, “entrenched intellectualists”, and “disaffected deviationists.” These three groups really believe they are going to do just fine, and even better, on their own. But as we all know, if you try to sail on a lifeboat in the middle of a massive ocean and you try to face a raging storm without protection, or you find you have no wind to propel you the thousands of miles, you are sure to perish. 

And I believe, if you find yourself in one of these three groups, be warned!

I will list the three groups, give a metaphorical description of them, and then I will use J. I. Packer’s description of them so we can apply some practical insights I have found to be true in my twenty-five years of ministry. Your job is evaluation. Ask yourself, am I on the main sailing vessel that has the needed provisions to make it the whole way, or have I jumped on a lifeboat that is not equipped to even last through a medium sized hurricane of life? I am afraid that there are a lot of people who claim to be loyal to Christ, when the sad truth is, they are only loyal to themselves. They are “Lost at Sea.”

THE IMPATIENT ADVENTURE SEEKER: “Restless Experientialists”

When you are crossing an ocean on a ship propelled by the wind, it takes a long, long time to arrive at your destination. A very long time. Sometimes all you see for weeks at a time are clouds and blue oceans and skies, day-after-day, nothing new, same old monotony. There is a group of people that were not mentally prepared for this. They probably joined the crew of the boat because they thought the journey would be a non-stop adventure, fighting pirates, chasing whales, drinking rum and enjoying endless bright orange sunsets. But then reality sets in and so does their impatience. 

J. I. Packer calls this group the “restless experientialists.” Here is how they are described:

“They are a familiar breed, so much so that observers are sometimes tempted to define evangelicalism in terms of them. Their outlook is one of casual haphazardness and fretful impatience, of grasping after novelties, entertainments, and ‘highs’, and valuing strong feelings above deep thoughts. They have little taste for solid study, humble self-examination, disciplined meditation, and unspectacular hard work in their callings and prayers. They conceive the Christian life as one of exciting extraordinary experiences rather than of resolute rational righteousness. They dwell continually on themes of joy, peace, happiness, satisfaction and rest of soul with no balancing reference to the divine discontent of Romans 7, the fight of faith in Psalm 73, or the ‘lows’ of Psalm 42, 88, and 102…The reason why the restless experientialists are lopsided is that they have fallen victim to a form of worldliness, a man-centered, anti-rational individualism, which turns Christian life into a thrill-seeking ego-trip.”

See, I told you he was wordy. But oh they are such good words!

Are you the type of person that is always looking for thrills? Is feeling the way you determine truth? If it is, what do you do when the doldrums come along? Because they will. How do you navigate out of it? I have been working on this truth with my children through the blues of the COVID19 boredom. Most of my children’s lives have been filled with activity after activity after activity. And the way you know an activity was worth it in their mind was whether they had “fun” or not doing it. Well, staying home with mom and dad for two months straight is not fun. So has it been a waste of time? Isn’t there more to life than fun? Now apply that same sentiment to following Jesus, especially when he says in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” The impatient adventurer feels like they have been sold a lie because following Jesus is a long, long journey.

THE ARROGANT ARISTOCRAT: “Entrenched Intellectualists”

When you are a part of a crew, you are asked to do a lot of demeaning chores: swab the deck, hoist the sails, bail the flooded storage quarters of sea water down below. You also get to know people very well, and most people would rather sing silly sailer songs, “I’m tired and I want to go home…”, show off their tattoos, and dance to a fiddle on deck than look through a sextant and speculate on the rotation of the earth. But the arrogant aristocrat is the one who would rather sit in his cabin quarters reading large books on “Understanding Constellations and their use in Ocean Navigation” than joining the rest of the crew laughing on deck. Aristocrats have a tendency to look down on the regular rabble, not valuing who they are or enjoying the simple pleasures of a cool breeze and a gorgeous sunset. 

J. I. Packer calls this group the “entrenched intellectualists.” Here is how they are described:

“This is a familiar group, but not so common as the previous type. Some of them seem to be victims of an insecure temperament and inferiority feelings, others to be reacting out of pride or pain against the zaniness of experientialism as they have perceived it, but whatever the source of their syndrome the behavior-pattern in which they express it is distinctive and characteristic. Constantly they present themselves as rigid, argumentative, critical Christians, champions of God’s truth for whom orthodoxy is all. Upholding and defending their own view of that truth, whether Calvinist or Arminian, dispensational or Pentecostal, national church reformist or Free Church separatist, or whatever it might be, is their leading interest, and they invest themselves unstintingly in this task. There is little warmth about them; relationally they are remote; experiences do not mean much to them; winning the battle for mental correctness is their one great purpose.”

Are you a doctrine warrior, a jot-and-tittle fighter? Is your whole joy found in the pursuit of ‘being right’? If it is, maybe you are on the wrong boat. As J. I. Packer comments later concerning the error of this group, “True religion claims the affections as well as the intellect; it is essentially, in Richard Baxter’s phrase, ‘heart-work’.” It reminds me of my mom’s famous little quip she would say to me after she watches someone entrenched tooth-and-nail in an useless argument, “I don’t care how much the person knows, I ultimately want to know how much the person cares. And a person who argues foolishly, only cares about being right.”

THE PIRATE WANNA-BE: “Disaffected Deviationists”

In the far distance, this person notices a chain of islands that are calling to them, but the captain out of stubborn loyalty to the king, wants only to stay the course. “If only I could jump ship and join a crew of brave pirates, then I could go to any island at any time,” this person thinks to himself. The day-to-day monotony of organized crew-life  is wearing the ‘pirate wanna-be’ thin. While others on the crew dutifully follow their assignments and meet their boring obligations, this person longs for being free, the captain of their own ship. Who cares about reaching the New World when a land of coconuts and native girls is calling. And every time this person tries to convince a few of the others to join them, they either don’t have the courage to try something new, or they blindly trust the mission the captain set forth at the beginning of the trip. “Why doesn’t anyone have the bravery to question the course like me? Life is dynamic, we all must be willing to change.”

J. I. Packer calls this group the “disaffected deviationists.” Here is how they are described:

“I turn finally to the casualties and dropouts of the modern evangelical movement, many of whom have now turned against it to denounce it as a neurotic perversion of Christianity. It is distressing to think of these folk, both because their experience to date discredits our evangelicalism so deeply and also because there are so many of them. Who are they? They are people who once saw themselves as evangelicals, either from being evangelically nurtured or from coming to profess conversion within the evangelical sphere of influence, but who have become disillusioned about the evangelical point of view and have turned their back on it, feeling that it let them down. Some leave it for intellectual reasons, judging that what was taught them was so simplistic as to stifle their minds and so unrealistic and out of touch with facts as to be really if unintentionally dishonest. Others leave because they were led to expect that as Christians they would enjoy health, wealth, trouble-free circumstances, immunity from relational hurts, betrayals, and failures, and from making mistakes and bad decisions; in short, a flowery bed of ease on which they would be carried happily to heaven – and these great expectations were in due course refuted by events. Hurt and angry, feeling themselves victims of a confidence trick, they now accuse the evangelicalism they knew of having failed and fooled them, and resentfully give it up; it is a mercy if they do not therewith similarly accuse and abandon God himself.”

Wow, that is a mouthful, but a very true mouthful…

I find this group frustrates me the most, primarily because it took years of patience and friendship to help bring them to Jesus, however, in turn, they don’t have the same patience that was extended to them for others. They are overly sensitive and feel like they have been hoodwinked by a group of power-hungry leaders to get on the ship and blindly follow Jesus. It is hard for this group to realize that the two greatest commandments are linked, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your strength and all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.” It logically follows, if I really love God I will love my neighbor. Even if they are not too lovable. Sadly, pirates don’t have patience for people.

CONCLUSION

So are you on the large ship, working alongside your other fellow shipmates, swabbing, singing and bailing water? Or have you jumped ship and set out on your own? Or are you considering it right at this moment?

Because if you are, you need to know the ocean is a dangerous place, and you can’t tread water forever!