SOUTHBOROUGH L’ABRI PRAYER/NEWSLETTER, May, 2007
49 Lynbrook Road, Southborough, MA 01772

For some months I have been thinking and lecturing about sentimentality, stimulated by a course at Regent College last summer from Jeremy Begbie. Oscar Wilde quipped that sentimentality is what happens when cynicism goes on vacation. Having spent so much time on cynicism, I thought it would be worth looking at the other side. There are three parts to a sentimental way of understanding and living in the world: sentimentality denies or trivializes evil, it centers on self-referential emotion and it resists any costly but appropriate action into the world. These three form a certain coherence.

First, honesty about the depth of evil in the world is displaced by entertainment, distraction and a preoccupation with niceness, comfort and peace of mind. Children are told by Barney that the world is wonderful, everybody loves them and that they can have what they want by wishing for it. Disney has given us, in the words of one scholar, a world “without dirt, cruelty or complexity” – and also without God, but with plenty of niceness, optimism and superb marketing. How many people make a steady diet of stories in film and print which have impossibly unrealistic happy endings?

Second, self-referential emotion is a little harder to grasp. An example would be centering my life not around loving another person for who they are, but loving the way that person makes me feel about myself. There is quite a difference. Injustice may be the occasion for my anger, but the anger may actually be driven more by my self-satisfaction in feeling this appropriate indignation than it is by my actual care or concern for the victims of the injustice. Tennyson’s fifty page poem, “In Memoriam” about the death of his friend is all about Tennyson’s emotions in crisis, telling us almost nothing about the man who died. It is possible to feel passionately, but with little “sense of other”.

Third, there is no appropriate action response to feelings. This follows naturally if I think that there is nothing seriously wrong in the world which demands change and if the main thing in life is to feel good about myself.

Given that sentimentality understood in this way jars very hard against Biblical Christian faith, we might expect the Christian community to be an oasis or shelter from sentimentality. The sad thing is to have to say that Christians with the message to confront sentimentality have too often been seduced by it instead. It struck me that many of the themes that we emphasize so hard in L’Abri are correctives to sentimental consciousness. We challenge the cynicism that comes from sentimentality disillusioned. We talk of the radical fallenness and brokenness of the world to people who seem to have never taken its measure except as theory. We talk of both looking for and living out not just what is comfortable, nice and builds self-esteem, but what is true -- and we get blank stares. The idea of God can be co-opted to serve the full sentimental agenda in such a way that his actual word is not heard -- but this is not new news.

God warned Ezekiel (Ezek. 33) that when he spoke God’s words to the people about their approaching destruction, they would hear only a crooner of love songs. Jesus got similar treatment in his home town synagogue (Luke 4). He announced that the messianic age, the hinge pin of human history, had at last arrived in the hearing of that congregation! Were they challenged? Excited? Amazed? Not really. But they were impressed by his nice use of language. When he finally forced his way through their sentimentality, they mobbed him and tried to throw him off the nearest cliff. The apostle James also tangled with sentimentality. He wrote, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (Ja. 2:15-17). It is possible to have wonderful sentiments about peace, warmth and nourishment for others – but do nothing to help those people. It is even possible to think very well of yourself for having these charitable sentiments. James nails all three aspects of sentimentality in what he calls dead faith. These people are trivializing the evil of another’s suffering. They are pleased with their own self-referenced feelings of compassion. They allow the needy person to go away distraught, cold and hungry.

The irony of it all is that sentimentality does not deliver the comfort, peace and niceness that it promises. Collectively, niceness tends to displace honesty, which discourages open discussion of difficult issues and so prevents the healing of conflict. Individually, sentimentality leads to frustration. A life spent in denial of what is wrong in the world and focusing on good feelings about oneself is likely to experience disillusionment, shallowness and superficiality that even entertainment may not silence. How different was the apostle Paul’s life-experience! He wrote, “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying and see – we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor yet making many rich; as having nothing and yet possessing everything.” (II Co. 6:8-10) Paradoxically, in serving God and with God’s power, Paul was willing to suffer in his full battle against evil in the world, but experienced life at its depth with profound fulfillment.

Our winter term here in Southborough went well, but we did experience something of the diversity of modern America in our ranks in a way that was not always easy. We have always found that students help each other as much if not more than we as workers help them, but that doesn’t happen easily or automatically. This time it was a slower process than usual, but we saw God make really wonderful changes in peoples’ lives.

We will be starting out the spring/summer term as you get this letter. It looks as if we have a full house of very interesting people for the whole time. They will also be coming to a partially different crew of workers. Sarah Barsness left to go back to Idaho after the end of the last term. She will be much missed, but she is starting a training program in counseling in Boise and has just found a place to live and a job. Pray for this new stage in her life.

Our son Ben and his wife Nickaela have just moved in to Sarah’s upstairs apartment in the big house. They have finished two years at Regent College in Vancouver. We are very excited to have them join us in the work. Please pray for this change. No one steps into anyone else’s shoes because each one who comes brings new and different gifts. Their big news is that Nickaela is expecting twins (!) in the autumn.

Another change is that Taylor is hoping to make the transition from students using cassette tapes to using MP-3 players. This has been an enormous amount of work, but it has not been worth making the change until there was a critical mass of lectures on the new digital format. We will finally be there during this term.

The Morrells are doing well, “holding down the fort” of the big house. Pray for them as they carry a lot of weight in making things happen in the branch as a whole. Luke and Nate are finishing up a good year at school and Nate is starting in on the summer baseball season.

The Keyes family has had a great loss with the death of my mother, Lucy Keyes this spring at age 93, and with her the end of a generation for us. She had been a great encourager to all of us in the family and in L’Abri, so she will be missed. To shift to the other end of life, Alice, our son Tim’s wife is expecting a baby in November, so we will take major steps forward in the grandparent department this year. Pray for Mardi’s health. She had a bad winter and may have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or something like it. Pray particularly for her healing and to know how to negotiate life at L’Abri.

Give thanks for God’s provision, that our finances are looking better now than they did a month ago.
Pray for our two helpers this term. Missi, who was a student with us last term, will be here at the start. Stephanie, who was a student several years ago, will join us in a couple of weeks. They will have a heavy load.

One of the amazing things about L’Abri is that at the start of a term we know so little about the people we will know so very well by the end. Pray for God to bring the students that he wants here, for them to receive what he wants them to gain and that he may help us to free them from both cynicism and sentimentality.

Have a great summer,

Dick Keyes