Chapter 3: Fold Not the Arms of Action

Overview

Waiting for the Lord in a season of darkness should not be a time of inactivity. We should do what we can do, and doing is often God’s appointed remedy for despair. Wise Christian counselors, ancient and modern, have said so. George MacDonald—whom C. S. Lewis called his “master”—wrote that God has an especial tenderness toward those who are in the dark, and counselled: “Fold the arms of thy Faith, I say, but not of thy Action: bethink thee of something that thou oughtest to do, and go to do it, if it be but the sweeping of a room, or the preparing of a meal, or a visit to a friend. Heed not thy feelings: Do thy work.”

Three hundred years earlier Baxter gave the same counsel and traced it to Scripture: live not idly but in the constant business of a lawful calling as far as bodily strength allows. Idleness is “the devil’s home for temptation” and for unprofitable, distracting musings, while labour profits both soul and body (Proverbs 31). He testified that he had known grievous, despairing melancholy cured and turned into godly cheerfulness principally by constancy and diligence in the business of family and calling.

What Matters Is Your Duty, Not Your Joy?

This counsel raises a critical question. MacDonald and Baxter seem to make feelings negligible—“do your duty, never mind your joy.” If that were what they meant, Piper would strongly disagree. But “heed not thy feelings” most likely means: don’t let wrong feelings govern you; act against them. If your feelings say that staying in bed is best today, preach to your feelings and tell them how foolish they are—without losing sight of the gospel, remembering that getting out of bed is enabled by the Spirit and is becoming what you already are in Christ. Then exert your will and get up.

The deeper question remains: if joy in God is the fountain of love and the root of right living, can behaviour that proceeds without joy be virtuous? Piper answers at two levels. First, a Christian, however dark the season, is never completely without joy in God. The seed remains—perhaps only a remembered taste of goodness and an unwillingness to let that goodness go. It is not the “joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8), but it is a fragment of it: like a prisoner pulling out a tattered photograph of his wife, or a paralyzed man watching a video of the day he could dance. Even the penitent sadness that we cannot desire God as we ought carries within it the seed of the joy we once knew.

Duty Includes the Duty of Joy

The second answer: we should never say to ourselves or to another in darkness, “Just do your work. Just do your duty. Just act like a Christian even if you don’t feel like one.” That is almost good advice; the problem is the word just. Alongside “do your duty” we must say four more things.

First, joy is part of your duty. “Rejoice always” (1 Thessalonians 5:16). God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7); serve the Lord with gladness (Psalm 100:2); show mercy with cheerfulness (Romans 12:8); count trials all joy (James 1:2). We water down the divine command when we call someone to half their duty.

Second, while they do their work, the disconsolate should probably also be repenting of the sin of gloomy faith. “Probably,” because even where the main cause is physical there is likely some element of pride or self-pity mingled in. This may sound like an added burden, but it is not added: if it is a burden at all, it is already there, and naming it does not create it. Failing to rejoice in God when commanded to rejoice is sin; false comforts lead to artificial healing, while the truest diagnoses lead to the deepest cures. So we say: if you can, get up and make a meal, sweep a room, take a walk, visit a friend, go to work—but it is not a matter of indifference whether you do it with joy in God; and if you can’t, tell him so, and that you are sorry. He will hear you mercifully and forgive.

Will You Be a Hypocrite If You Obey without Joy?

Third: as you are able to do some of your duty, ask God that the joy be restored. Do not sit and wait for joy, saying, “I would be a hypocrite to do an act of mercy today when I do not feel the joy of mercy.” You are not a hypocrite if you know that joy is your duty, repent that you lack it, and earnestly ask God to restore it even as you do the deed. That is not how a hypocrite thinks; it is how a true Christian thinks in the fight for joy.

Fourth: as you work, thank God that he has at least given you the will to work. Do not say it is hypocritical to thank God with your tongue when you do not feel thankful in your heart. Hypocritical thanksgiving aims to conceal ingratitude and win the praise of men; that is not your aim. Your aim in loosing your tongue with gratitude is that God would be merciful and fill your words with the emotion of true gratitude. You are not hiding hardness; you are hoping for the inbreaking of the Spirit.

Thanksgiving with the Mouth Stirs Up Thankfulness in the Heart

We might also ask the despairing saint, “Do you know your heart so well that you are sure your words of thanks have no trace of gratitude in them?” Piper distrusts his own assessment of his motives—he doubts he knows his good motives well enough to see every trace of contamination, or his bad ones well enough to see every trace of grace. So it is not folly for a Christian to assume there is a residue of gratitude in his heart when he speaks and sings of God’s goodness, even though he feels little or nothing.

Experience also shows that doing the right thing, in this way, is often the path toward being in the right frame. Hence Baxter’s counsel: resolve to spend most of your time in thanksgiving and praising God. If you cannot do it with the joy you should, do it as you can. You do not have power over your comforts, but have you no power over your tongue? Every person, good or bad, is bound to praise God and be thankful for all he has received, and to do it as well as he can rather than leave it undone. “Doing it as you can is the way to be able to do it better. Thanksgiving stirreth up thankfulness in the heart.”