Nathan E. Lewis

In the days of his youth Fred was an outdoor enthusiast hiking the trails of Oregon. As an old man he began to suffer more and more from arthritis. He bought a modest RV, one of the simpler ones with an expanding bay window and a dish on the roof. He would park it along the Salmon River peering at the riffles where he would have fly fished in days past. At some point he began to surf the 378 channels off the satellite. He regularly drew the drapes of the bay window to cut the glare on the screen. In time he was confined to a wheel chair and installed a lift on his RV. The conventional wisdom of his friends and care providers was, “Don’t go out; you will endanger yourself.” And so, his mindset toward the nature he loved changed from joy to fear. His surfing finger would pause most often on Oregon Field and Stream, then he began to watch nothing else but the History Channel. Then, he took an interest in Christian cable, mostly fanatics crying the demise of American culture and morality. Continue reading »

Psalm 4: 4
Be angry, and do not sin;
Ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent.

David, who wrote this Hebrew couplet also wrote in Psalm 37, “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.” My personal experience is that I do better to obey Psalm 37 than to find a way to express my anger short of sinning. There must be a rare righteous indignation, but I have yet to experience it. The “A” line of a Hebrew couplet is often related to the “B” couplet in this fashion: “A what’s more, B.” The “B” line helps us to understand what David means in writing, “Be angry, and do not sin.” In the context of the “B” line, it means that the best way to be angry yet refrain from sinning is to keep your anger private. Uh Oh! Is David describing the destructive suppressed anger our counselors warn against? No, he is not recommending suppressed anger but noting that anger is rash. Were we to think first, we might find another response other than anger. We have been taught to think before we speak and now we are learning how to pause before we send an email. David would have us sleep on a troubling matter before any outburst. Continue reading »