You will know them by their fruits.
Matthew 7:16
...the first effect of the power of God in the heart in regeneration is to give the heart a Divine taste or sense; to cause it to have a relish of the loveliness and sweetness of the supreme excellency of the Divine nature.
— Jonathan Edwards
I read Dr. Albert Mohler’s post about Ann Lamott last night before I went to bed, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. You should read it in order to have the proper context for my comments here.
I read several of Lamott’s nonfiction works years ago, and while I was always uncomfortable with her pro-choice position, her lack of concern for sexual purity, and her frequent use of unwholesome language, I took her testimony of being a Christian at face value. When faced with her own unplanned pregnancy by an unsupportive partner, she opted NOT to have an abortion, and her writing offers much evidence of a changed life. In addition, it takes time to be conformed to the image of Christ, and if we were all as open as she is about her life and wrote about it for a living as she does, our particular sin struggles would be more glaringly evident. On top of all this, she lives in Marin County, California, the Mecca of American liberalism. I mean, what can you expect?
However, after reading Dr. Mohler’s post, I have to ask the question, how can someone indwelt by the Spirit of Christ blatantly disregard the Biblical directive, “Thou shalt not kill” and participate in the euthanasia of a friend? Not only did she obtain the necessary drugs and administer the lethal dose, but her recounting of the process reveals no second thoughts and no subsequent remorse. The fact that she chose to write about it as she did displays a degree of hubris that is mind boggling.
My former thinking about Lamott in light of the current evidence has taught me something about myself. I wanted Lamott’s Christian testimony to be true for my own sake. I wanted someone who is a smart, hip, articulate, literary celebrity who claims to be a Christian to be the real thing because it makes the rest of us not look so bad. No one can possibly say Lamott is a right-wing fundamentalist. If Lamott loves Jesus and reads the Bible and goes to church, then perhaps the rest of us have been misunderstood.
Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.
I John 3:13
No more delusions.
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3 comments:
Good writing, Katy. Very good!
On the abortion thing, I can't say if she's regenerate - but God gets to make that call, not me.
An the euthanasia thing - five years ago last month a particularly aggressive type of cancer killed my husband.
1) he didn't want to die 2) cancer pain is a terrible thing.
I could write a while on this...
But I agree, the way that Lamott wrote about it was "hard" and I'm glad that I don't have to be the one to make the call on her soul.
Me too! And as I told someone else, I hope my feelings about ber turn out to be wrong. I can say with a certain amount of confidence, however, that she didn't exhibit much in the way of wisdom and discernment in writing about it the way she did. (I say this from a distinctively Christian perspective.)
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