Dear Friends,
I’m sitting on the cabin porch this morning, tag-teaming a stakeout with my wife. Hanging on a tree, you see, is a wooden box intended to be a squirrel house, and it hasn’t been used for many, many years. Yesterday we noticed a momma squirrel spread-eagled on top of the box, not moving. Her baby kept poking his head out of the hole, and she just ignored the little guy. We thought she was dead for a good while. I even approached her and she didn’t even twitch. Clearly, she is sick, or else she was just a tired, haggard mom getting away from the kids for a few hours.
Anyway, she finally did rouse herself and seemed fine. Weirdest squirrel behavior I’ve ever seen. But she did later scamper off and leave her babies inside the box, and we never saw her return—hence the stakeout. We wonder if she wandered off and died somewhere, leaving the babies behind. No, we won’t be adopting squirrel babies, as tempting as that can be—the bubonic plague that just killed mom is something we want no part of—but we’d like to know what happened, at any rate.
It brought to mind an amazing promise of Scripture, from Isaiah 49:
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
I can barely conceive of a mother forgetting her babies. I saw two Whitetail does yesterday with the tiniest spotted fawns I’ve ever seen. Their maternal instincts quickly kicked in when we pulled off the road to get a closer look, shepherding them up the hill to safety. As unlikely as it may be, it is still possible for a mother to forget her young; but God declares, because of his covenant promises in Christ Jesus, that it is impossible for him to forget his people.
That’s because God is full of compassion. That’s how he revealed himself to Moses: “The LORD, the LORD, compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love…”
You know what the world needs? More godly compassion. I don’t happen to have my copy of Volume 3 of theologian Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics handy at the moment. I’m in the mountains and, while I am kind of nerdy, I don’t carry that four-volume set around with me. Let me paraphrase a bit of it as best I can.
It’s in a section on the sinfulness of humanity, and Bavinck recognizes that the Bible speaks of human beings in very harsh terms—we are totally depraved, incapable of good apart from God’s grace; it is hard to think of a dimmer estimation of man’s predicament than that of the Bible. And yet, Bavinck observes, the worst estimation of man does not come from the Bible, but by man himself. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, he writes, but far worse to fall into the hands of other men. For when God condemns, he offers forgiveness. When God humbles, he also exalts. When he lays low, he lifts up. He is the compassionate and gracious God. Not so, with fellow humans. We condemn each other with no offer of compassion and hope: we create “cancel culture.”
Elizabeth Bruenig recently got at this reality in a remarkably well-articulated Tweet (I cant seem to get the Tweet to embed here, but I can quote it):
there's just something unsustainable about an environment that demands constant atonement but actively disdains the very idea of forgiveness
Oh, indeed! It shouldn’t surprise us that a godless world should produce ungodliness. And that’s sadly where we are as a society just now. My sister told me yesterday of perfectly nice, ordinary lady on Instagram who got rage-mobbed and driven off the platform. She was part of a niche group of people called “Bookstagrammers”—people who devote their account to sharing thoughts about books. Well, this lady put on a seminar for other bookstagrammers on how to leverage relationships with publishing companies. Seems like a good idea. She has something to offer the world, since she’s already done the research and leg-work.
Incredible as it might sound, the mob (consisting of woke, smug, self-righteous white women) descended on her with rage that she, a white woman, would do this at a moment when publishing companies are trying to be more diverse and inclusive. I am not making this up. Not only was this woman accused of being a racist when the topic had nothing whatsoever to do with race; she was also branded a “classist,” because she was charging a fee for her seminar, when the information she had gathered and compiled could be gotten for free. The bone-headed stupidity of all this is just too much to take, really. It’s enough to make you want to crawl in a hole and never re-emerge—precisely what this poor woman has done.
People scoff at Calvinism, with its belief in the total depravity of man. But how much worse is a doctrine of total depravity—you’re a racist to the core of your DNA!—without any hope of grace and redemption? Accusation without compassion. Judgment without mercy. The God of Calvin—that is to say, the God who reveals himself in Scripture—is the Almighty judge who has greater love and compassion than a nursing mother, and he promises it to you. He provides the lamb for slaughter—he “cancels” himself at the cross (“he became sin for us”), so that you may never be canceled.
What a gospel—what a message—what good news!
Here’s some more good news: momma squirrel has now emerged from the box, followed by her SIX babies. She didn’t forget them, after all. Just like God won’t forget you or me.
I’m tapping all this on my phone, and my battery is depleting. I have no electricity up here on this mountain, so I’ll sign off this week without my customary Miscellany section.
But I can’t leave without a music video: here is Brandi Carlisle’s debut performance of her song “Evangeline,” a jaw-droppingly great song about, well, maternal instincts. Enjoy!