Gentle and Lowly
It was the rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who wrote, “When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
I guess that makes me old. More and more these days, I find myself craving kindness. I find myself needing it and I find myself wanting to offer it to others. As our Anglican parish plods along through a careful, prolonged search for a new rector, the prayer I keep coming back to is that the person who comes to serve us is a person who is kind. That may seem like a low bar. It’s not.
Living as we are in a period of deep division, of grudges and cynicism and short-sighted vindictiveness, when cruelty is celebrated and narcissism runs wild, kindness feels incongruous with the times. It feels inadequate. It feels weak. That’s exactly why we need it. Desperately.
Fortunately, kind is one of the first words I’d use to describe Dane Ortlund’s recent book Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers. It’s a kind-hearted book. In its kindness, it’s also sort of subversive. Let me tell you what I mean.
Ortlund, a Presbyterian (PCA) pastor in the western suburbs of Chicago, makes it pretty clear from the get-go that he is writing to his own people. He’s writing to Christians who know and love John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and – perhaps most of all – the Puritans. When he mentions tendencies in “our churches” to over-emphasize the wrath of God, for instance, he has a specific subset of churches in mind. (Hint: it’s not the “seeker-sensitive” ones.)
He knows who his audience is. And while the Venn diagram has some overlap, I’m not entirely part of that audience. I’ve read some of the Puritans over the years, but they have never been foundational for me the way they have been for others. In my limited familiarity with the Puritans, kindness isn’t necessarily the first word that comes to mind. I think of the pursuit of holiness, to be sure. I think of a certain kind of spiritual and doctrinal rigidity. Yet in this book Ortlund appeals directly – almost exclusively – to the Puritans. He draws on their writings to reveal the “gentle and lowly” heart of Christ.
Knowing his audience as he does, Ortlund takes pains, especially early in the book, to anticipate objections. Some of these objections frankly wouldn’t have occurred to me. But again, he knows his audience. And it bears mentioning that despite his many caveats and reassurances, Ortlund has still come under fire in certain unpleasant corners of the internet for insisting on the kinder and lowlier aspects of the unchanging character of Jesus. Some of those who would claim the name of Jesus seem not to care for the Suffering Servant.
Far be it from me to join the chorus of uncharitable detractors. But let me offer this critique, hopefully in the spirit of gentleness: from where I sit, Ortlund has a tendency – unfortunate but understandable – to write about both sinning and suffering in almost exclusively individualistic terms. I keep wanting him to acknowledge, even in passing, the ways sin can supersede the individual or the ways suffering can be structural and systemic. These ideas are thoroughly biblical, even if the Puritans didn’t emphasize them. Yes, of course my heart is crooked, but also, injustice is real, pervasive, and grievous. The heart of Christ breaks not just for me in my own private sin and suffering, but also for the whole beautiful but broken world that groans for shalom. It doesn’t compromise the gospel to celebrate the good news that “he comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found.” On the contrary. That’s wonderful news!
Questions of emphasis aside, this is a good book, a much-needed book. I’m glad it’s finding its way into people’s homes, and I’m glad it found its way into ours. May kindness be contagious.
