Beeson podcast, Episode 406
Dr. Barry L. Callen
August 21, 2018

Announcer:	Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George.
Timothy George:	Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. My guest today on the Beeson podcast is Dr. Barry L. Callen, a distinguished scholar and leader in the church. He is Dean Emeritus of Anderson University School of Theology, the editor of Aldersgate Press. He's also served with a ministry known as Horizon International, a mission to aids orphan in six African nations. A remarkable life of ministry and service to the Lord and his church. Barry, welcome to the Beeson podcast.
Barry L. Callen:	Why, thank you. It's certainly my pleasure, my pleasure indeed.
Timothy George:	Now, we're going to talk today about one of your own recent books. You've written many books and edited many others, but we're going to talk about one of them. But before we get into that, I want us to just mention briefly our mutual love and friendship for the great James Earl Massey, who went home to be with the Lord just a few months ago. We were together at his funeral service in Detroit, Michigan at the Church of God that he served as founding pastor for many years there. Tell us about Dr. Massey and your relationship with him.
Barry L. Callen:	Well, I would love to. I met Dr. Massey when he first came to Anderson University as campus pastor back in the 1960s, and we served together over the years, he as teacher, often, and then when I was Dean of the School of Theology, and when he was appointed Dean in the 1990s, I was pleased to orient him into that position and also to publish a book back then called Sharing Heaven's Music, where I had homileticians from all over the nation who loved his work do creative writing for a man that they considered the dean of preachers.
	And then, of course, when he had his battle with cancer in his last year and a half, he asked me to be his mentor through that process, and we were on the phone two, three times a week for 17 months. He just became the dearest of brothers, and I will never forget the precious man.
Timothy George:	Absolutely, and I feel exactly the same. What a great leader of the Lord's church and mentor, friend, encourager, all of those things. I want to mention another book that you have edited with Dr. Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Select Writings of James Earl Massey, titled Views from the Mountains, just about to be released from Aldersgate Press. Could you say a word about that?
Barry L. Callen:	This was the last great goal that James said that he had for his life, and that was to have gathered his select writings, which he selected for the most part by himself and gave to me and asked if I could get this possibly done for him. It has just come off the press. In fact, it's now shipping and is active on amazon.com, nearly 500 pages of his superb wisdom, carefully organized. By the way, he proofed all of this material right before he died. He never had a chance to get the book in his hands, but he saw the cover, and he proofed all the material. Thumbs up, he said, all the way. Precious memory.
Timothy George:	Wonderful. And most if not all the book, I think, are writings that have been hitherto unpublished, certainly not collected in this way before, right?
Barry L. Callen:	That's true, although many of these have been published before in a range of seminary journals and many other places. In a few cases, chapters in books. So we did have to get permission from many, many publishers to reuse some material that he wanted seen again. But we do have some sermons and other things in the book that have never been in print before.
Timothy George:	So if you knew Dr. Massey, you were blessed by his ministry, or you just want to learn more about the thought and work of this great servant of Christ, the book is called Views from the Mountain: Select Writings of James Earl Massey, edited by Barry Callen and Curtiss Paul DeYoung, and it's available now from Amazon. You can go and order it, published by Aldersgate Press. Thank you for doing this. It's a great service to the Lord's church to have this available.
Barry L. Callen:	Oh, it's my privilege to serve my brother in that way.
Timothy George:	Now, we want to talk about a book you yourself have written, just published recently, called The Jagged Journey: Suffering—God's Heart and Our Calling. You've spoken a little bit about your relationship to Dr. Massey, how close you were across the years. I wonder if maybe one of the reasons you were drawn together in such a profound friendship is the fact that you both were sharers together in the fellowship of suffering? This book tells a little bit about your own story, as well as great lessons from the word of God. So tell us a little bit about your own story and how you came to write this particular book.
Barry L. Callen:	Well, I would say that I'm a little older now, and I've had my own personal battles with cancer and retina detachment, and I lost a wife to cancer, so I suppose partly the writing was because I've been so sensitized to that through personal experience. But I believe more importantly than that, I wrote the book because I wanted to get at what the Bible emphasizes, more than just what I have experienced. I think, actually, the publisher asked me to write the book and said, "Choose the most important subject in Christianity." I pondered that a long time and decided that that subject is suffering.
	But I want to make clear to your hearers, I don't mean by that merely our aches and pains and deaths as humans. The subtitle is Suffering—God's Heart and Our Calling. That's seeing suffering in a much bigger perspective. It's less of a problem to be solved. It's actually more of a calling that we have to embrace. The big subject, I think, of all in Christianity is who God is. I wrote a book some years ago called Discerning the Divine on how Christian thinkers over the centuries have tried to understand God, who is the biggest subject. And so I wanted to zero in on what I understand to be our best answer to that core question of who God is, and that answer ... well, his name is Jesus. Interestingly, we know God best in Jesus through suffering. A large part of the gospels are the Passion and have to do with the suffering of Jesus, as a window we have into the heart of God.
Timothy George:	Now, often in the midst of suffering, maybe the most natural, frequently asked question, particularly from believers, is why? Why me? Why has God allowed this to happen to me? Does God answer the question of why we suffer?
Barry L. Callen:	Well, it's certainly clear that our sin brings much unnecessary suffering. The wages of sin is death. We all live in a fallen world, and sometimes we suffer because of our own sin and that of others. So that's part of the answer to the why of our suffering, it's our own fault. But I think it's also clear ... and this is really what I wanted to try to emphasize in the book ... it's also clear from God's dealing with the questions and complaints of Job that many answers to our "why" questions about suffering are actually beyond our understanding. Job and we are told to stop demanding answers from God and focus on believing in the one who has all understanding and is all goodness and who loves us dearly, despite whatever circumstances we are facing.
	So again, life is less about waiting for the storm to stop and getting all the answers to our "why" questions. Life is more about learning to dance in the rain, living joyously by faith without all of the answers. Christian maturity is certainly getting comfortable with not knowing what can't be known, at least not yet.
Timothy George:	I want to ask you about the title of this book and the image that you used, The Jagged Journey. It's a jarring image, The Jagged Journey. You think of zigzagging, you think of start and stopping, you think of this way and that, you think of up and down. The Jagged Journey, where does that come from?
Barry L. Callen:	Well, number one, it's our own experiences. Number two, if you look at the Bible and the people of God across the many centuries, you see the tremendous suffering and the ups and the downs of the experience of the people of God. The image on the front of the book is of a very precipitous, jerking kind of path that goes out into a huge gorge, and all of a sudden, the faithful person can't even see the next step. Now, if one looks way across, you can see the journey's end, you can see that the path does end in light and joy, but getting from where you are at the moment to out there is kind of a giant unknown, one step at a time.
	That's kind of what the life of faith is about. It is a life of faith, and it's always been that way with the people of God and, we must assume, won't be any different for us as we go on a day at a time in a world like this.
Timothy George:	That reminds me in a way of the great book by John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress.
Barry L. Callen:	Exactly.
Timothy George:	It tells the story of this journey. It's a jagged journey for Christian, the pilgrim in that story, through all kinds of experiences, Vanity Fair, the dragon, Apollyon who waits for him, and finally at the end of the day, the Celestial City, but not easily and not quickly. It's a jagged journey.
Barry L. Callen:	Absolutely. In fact, my own published autobiography is titled A Pilgrim's Progress.
Timothy George:	That's great.
Barry L. Callen:	I'm still in progress, as we all are, and I don't know what tomorrow brings. I mean, I know who my God is, and I know what the ultimate future is, but I don't know tomorrow. I have to walk in faith every day.
Timothy George:	Yeah. You know, you include a verse. I don't think we know the author of this verse. It's anonymous as far as I know. It's very moving along this very line, in your book, "Out of the black and murky clouds descends the stainless snow. Out of the crawling earthbound worm, a butterfly is born. Out of the somber shrouded night, behold a golden morn. Out of the pain and stress of life, the peace of God pours down. Out of the nails, the spear, the cross, redemption and a crown." That's very moving, very moving.
Barry L. Callen:	Absolutely. It is very moving, and that's just the hope. That's actually the resurrection image of the New Testament, the cold dark tomb, and yet that constant possibility of brand new life that bursts forth.
Timothy George:	One of the things I liked about your book, Barry, was the way in which you so carefully wove your presentation, your argument, your statement out of the scriptures and kept referring back to the scriptures. You do this in a number ... a lot of the Psalms are here, but especially this passage. I wanted to ask you to comment on it. From 2 Corinthians 12:8-10, this tremendous passage, well-known to many of us, where Paul, in a time of great struggle, goes to the Lord and prays that he might be delivered, and the answer is, "My grace is sufficient for you. My power is perfected in weakness." Could you talk about that?
Barry L. Callen:	Yes, indeed. I've loved the work of Walter Brueggemann, for instance, on the Psalms, and he has this picture of the Psalms. He divides them into groups of three, all of the Psalms, of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. You see the jaggedness there. When we find God in salvation, it seems that the world is perfectly put together, and all is again right. And yet, something happens as we move along in the life of faith. Something happened as the Jews moved along through time, and something brought disorientation. Then there are those great Psalms of reorientation. Psalm 23, of course, would be the best-known picture of this hazardous journey of faith. It's quite the thing.
	My book, The Jagged Journey, is actually structured around the passage in 2 Corinthians that you point to, and St. Paul's picture is exactly the same as that pattern of the Psalms, and that is, when suffering comes, we first want to run and deny. That's very human. And then God says, "But wait, my grace is sufficient." And then when we embrace that great word of grace, we come to learn that our weakness can actually become strength, through the ministry of the spirit. So it's that three-part of the struggle and our denial and the disorientation, and then the great announcement of grace being sufficient. And then our learning how to find in our weakness and suffering that strength.
	Those three parts is the way that the whole book is structured, because I think that is the jagged journey. We see it all through the Old Testament, and we see it placarded in the New. We see it played out in the story of Jesus. It's everywhere, and we must do it again ourselves. It's the only path we have to walk.
Timothy George:	I wonder if you would agree with me that sometimes, before we can gain that insight and really own it in the very depths of our souls, we have to linger sometimes in the shadows. I remember Dr. Gardner Taylor, a great friend of Dr. Massey's and one of the great preachers of our time, surely, a lecture he gave one time, in which he described a young pastoral intern under his care who went to see a deacon in the church who had lost his wife. Dr. Taylor comes in after the young minister is there and comes into the scene when the young minister is simply giving kind of trite answers: "This is God's will. God will see you through this. God's will." Dr. Taylor said later on he took him aside and said, "Young minister, you must be careful how you use these words in moments like that, because you have to struggle for your footing in the awful swellings of the Jordan before you are able to speak out of the depths to someone else's depths." I wonder if you would agree with that sense of-
Barry L. Callen:	Oh, I would very much agree with that. I have heard from a theological point of view some of the dumbest and most unconscionable things said by a pastor in a time like that, for the most well-meaning of reasons. You just feel like you've got to say something that sounds comfortable. You know, "She's dead now, and she was a great soloist, but you know, God just needed another soloist in the choir."
Timothy George:	Meant well, but really brings more pain, right, than solace?
Barry L. Callen:	Yeah, exactly. When we're on the jagged journey, we say some really jagged things to people. Oh my.
Timothy George:	Your book is filled with that kind of wisdom. A lot of people who listen to this podcast, Barry, are themselves pastors. Some of them are students, seminary students, and others who are beginning in ministry or at least who are serving others at points of pain in their life. Do you have any special counsel or advice you would give to someone who's a helper, a presence of Christ in a moment like that?
Barry L. Callen:	Well, yes, many things. Actually, my chapters 10 and 11 are addressed to the person who's trying to figure out what to do to deal with suffering, practical ideas, so that one is titled Managing the Journey and the other, Training for Christlikeness. Makes it very clear there that this is not instant. It does involve our activity, not merely God's grace. But advice to pastors, I would say you counsel people, number one, don't deny the pain. That's our first tendency, to run. It's real. Don't demand answers, because as we learned from Job, sometimes there aren't answers, or there are, but we don't understand them if we knew.
	I know one of the things I would counsel would be, don't blame God. Don't blame other people. Maybe above all, don't blame yourself. We look for something to blame when there's pain, and sometimes we're terribly hard on ourselves when that's inappropriate. I would say this, encourage people to look for opportunities to witness. It's amazing how witness becomes more possible in times of crisis. Paul did his best evangelizing when he was in prison. Our wounds can become our best tools for the healing of other sufferers. I would say focus on the fact that by God's grace, thorns can become crowns. That's one of the chapters in the book, Thorns Can Become Crowns. Lean on the promise of Jesus, "I will be with you always," regardless.
	Maybe go back to the Old Testament and repeat the good news that's recorded by Isaiah in Chapter 43, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name," and then this amazing part of the verse, "When you walk through the fire, the flames will not consume you." We don't know that next step on the journey, and it may be fire, but the flames will not consume you. If those kind of messages and cautions and words of hope could be conveyed to sufferers, that would be of great help, but I think one of the things I'd like to say, and that is that we're not talking here ... I'm not talking here ... only about our pains and our suffering bodily and whatever. But the big story of Jesus to us, it's an amazing thing. He said, you know, the cross that they dropped into a hole on the hill of Golgotha could never have happened if that cross had not been in the heart of God first.
	That cross is a sign of the self-giving divine, and he came to us with that kind of reaching love. The big message of Jesus, then, is number one, that's who God is, the reaching, loving, sacrificing for us God. And so if you know that God, and Jesus says to us, "Here's the message I have for you, take up your cross and follow," meaning that if we also give ourselves away in self-sacrificing love, that will help others to come closer to God. Even our pain, our self-sacrificing can become actual tools for witness and evangelism.
	I think we don't need ... I've said this in other writings ... in the church today, we don't need more big people, more important people, more flashy people. What we need in the church are more people like Jesus, who are simple people, humble people, people who are giving themselves away in love on behalf of others. Living like that is to be a child of God, because it's a reflection of Jesus's life, and Jesus was God with us. What more need one say? That is the entire Bible story, suffering. That is, again, the subtitle of the book, Suffering—God's Heart and Our Calling.
Timothy George:	I love the last chapter of your book. It's called God with Us Always, just what we've been talking about. You open it with a quotation from Paul Scherer. Paul Scherer was a great preacher, I believe a Lutheran, of an earlier generation, not so well-known today as he ought to be. This is a wonderful statement from Paul Scherer. I'd like to read it, and then maybe you have a final comment for our listeners. This is what Paul Scherer wrote: "I know the things that happen, the loss and the loneliness and the pain, but there's a mark on it now, as if someone who knew that way himself, because he had traveled it, had gone on before and left his sign. And all of it begins to make a little sense at last, gathered up, laughter and tears, into the life of God, with his arms all around it." What a wonderful, wonderful quotation.
Barry L. Callen:	I thought maybe as a final word, a paraphrase of the last couple of verses of the New Testament, the message that we're left with. John reports this: Jesus, who testifies to all these things, says to you and me, I'm on my way. I'll be there soon. Yes, come Master Jesus. The grace of the Master Jesus be with you all, O yes. That's where the New Testament ends, this great promise. No matter what the suffering, no matter how jagged the journey, I'll be there soon, O yes indeed.
Timothy George:	O yes. My guest today on the Beeson podcast has been Dr. Barry L. Callen. He's the author of The Jagged Journey: Suffering—God's Heart and Our Calling, available just now from Cascade Books. I recommend it to you strongly. Thank you, Barry, for this wonderful conversation today.
Barry L. Callen:	Oh, you're very welcome. It's been my pleasure. You are a special brother. And back to James Massey, he loved you dearly.
Timothy George:	Well, thank you.
Barry L. Callen:	Which says a lot about you, because James was a man of judgment.
Timothy George:	Thank you so much. And God bless you in your own good work.
Barry L. Callen:	Thank you, sir, and you.
Announcer:	You've been listening to the Beeson podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational, evangelical divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson podcast.