I’m not sure if there are “Dune nerds” any more but that has been a thing in the past.
THE FEAR LITANY
A Dune nerd wasn’t merely someone who read or even appreciated Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel, Dune. It was someone who was able to recite the “Litany against Fear” and enjoyed doing so:
“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
As Amy Radcliffe writes at The Nerdist, this is “probably the best known collection of words in Frank Herbert’s entire novel.” They are presented as a technique for managing fear. Of course, a great deal of their impact comes from their place in a narrative that defines them.
Christians can use passages of Scripture the same way and they should… to a point. There is also a risk that Christians will fixate so much on isolated passages as lessons for life or sources of inspiration that they don’t adequately learn the narrative of Scripture in which those passages have meaning.
PAUL’S FORGET & GO FORWARD LITANY
Nevertheless, there are parts of Scripture that lend themselves to being used in ways that remind us of the way Dune nerds use the fear litany. The Psalms are obviously inspired in part to be used as hymns or prayers. And, while I argued in my book Solomon Says (Amazon) that Proverbs must be more than a haphazard collection of aphorisms, they are undeniably meant to be memorized or taught as needed.
Paul’s letter to the Philippians is a real letter addressing a real situation. Paul knows the people whom he is addressing. It is not a book of lessons or principles. Nevertheless, Paul gives us, in what we know as chapter 3, a statement that seems to work as a general statement on life, perhaps even a motto.
It is understandable that many miss what Paul is doing. He begins by condemning false teachers. While, these are obviously bad people, specifically, they are Judaizers, like the people Paul condemned in Galatians. We know this especially when he calls them “the mutilation” at the end of the verse. The ESV’s “mutilators of the flesh” is a bit of a paraphrase there. Paul says to watch out for the mutilation because (verse 3) we are the circumcision. The two words sounds similar in the Greek. The KJV translates it as “Beware the concision because we are circumcision” to transmit the wordplay going on.
So there are false teachers advocating something that Paul derides as mutilation and claims that Christians don’t need it because they are already circumcised as much as they will ever need to be. And he goes on the say his credentials as a fully Jewish Christian are better than theirs so the Philippians can trust that, if there was anything they needed to do to begin or complete their Christian life, he would tell them. He has been circumcised on the right day according to the Law. His genealogy was preserved so that he knows his ancestry going back to to the tribe of Benjamin. He is a Hebrew of Hebrews, possibly meaning he was raised speaking the language.
Notice that, though all of this was once a source of pride for Paul, it wasn’t something he took credit for. He didn’t chose his ancestry. He didn’t ask for circumcision as an 8-day-old infant. He didn’t decide to grow up in a household speaking Hebrew. All that and more was done for him and to him. This is important because some people think that the only issue in Philippians is thinking that they can earn God’s favor or merit salvation by their works. No. Paul’s issue in Galatians and Philippians and Romans is a lot broader than that issue. People can be prideful and arrogant, even to the point of unbelief, even if they repudiate the idea that their good works obligate God to accept them.}
But Philippians is not Galatians. Paul does not offer extensive arguments from Scripture to show the Philippians that the Judaizers teach falsehood. The Philippians don’t seem to have yet found the Judaizers convincing.
According to Acts 16, when Paul came to Philippi, there were not enough Jews and God-fearing Gentiles to form a synagogue. He had to look for a place outside the city where a few believers (all women, apparently) held a prayer meeting on the Sabbath. Philippi was a Roman colony in Macedonia. Not only do we know that from secular history, but the Word of God tell us that explicitly in Acts 16:12.
When Paul was dragged into court in Philippi for casting out a demon that possessed a slave girl, his accusers threw his non-Roman identity in his face. “These men are Jews, and they are disturbing our city. They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice” (Acts 16:20–21 ESV). Apparently, demon exorcisms of slaves depriving the master of revenue was too strange to bring to court as a lawsuit, so they went with xenophobia and Roman patriotism. And it worked for awhile because Paul was whipped and imprisoned without a trial. It turned out that he was also a Roman citizen and he was able to demand a public apology and a public official escort, enhancing the status of the new Philippian church.
So when Paul writes a letter to the Philippians that mentions taking pride in his Jewish heritage, they don’t share that with him. What is much more likely is that they have a Roman heritage that is a matter of pride to them. Some of them have been raised speaking Latin. As Romans on foreign soil, they have been taught to spread Roman values and Roman traditions to the local “barbarians.”
The Philippian Christians have repudiated the pagan parts of this heritage and the ungodly practices that went along with it. But it isn’t that simple. Paganism was woven into the public life on every city and town. In a Roman colony, the cult of Caesar itself, would exert constant pressure on them. Both personally and as a church community, they would have to deal with what it means that, as Paul says later in chapter 3, their citizenship is in the heavens.
What Paul assured the Philippians at the beginning of his letter should be read here. Verses 3-6 of the first chapter, the first thing Paul says after his standard address and blessing:
I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
He prays with joy knowing that God has begun a work in Christians and he will complete it.
So the Judaizers were saying that you haven’t really started right without circumcision and other marks of Covenant under Moses, and that those who possess Torah are complete.
Paul addresses both issues claiming we have all started right without Torah and none of us are yet complete. That last thing might be considered, if you will, the “bad news” of his confidence. If God is going to complete a good work in us, that means he hasn’t done it yet. We are incomplete.
So Paul, uses the Judaizers to use his own background as an example for them to apply to their own personal and cultural backgrounds and for us to apply to ourselves.
Think of these two questions:
- If we are confident God has begun something in us that is new and different from what we share with our culture or what we have apart from Christ, then how should we view everything else we have or have been?
- If we are confident that God will complete us, how should we feel about being currently incomplete and how should we live?
I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ [or perhaps, “through the faithfulness of Christ], the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:4–11 ESV
Now one caveat about this passage: Paul does occasionally invoke his Jewish identity when it will help with his missionary endeavors, just as he invoked his Roman citizenship in Philippi to force the city elders to apologize in order to help the church there. He even appealed to Pharisees in the Sanhedrin as a fellow Pharisee to gain a hearing, according to Acts 23:6.
But Paul had been a persecutor of the Church. Until he knew Christ, even the Scriptures, God’s own word, were no good to him. Even good gifts of God get twisted, before and unless God begins a good work in us. Apart from God, the gifts are worthless. They are “rubbish!” How much more the sins and idolatries that people have been raised in and have committed.
All of that, Paul now COUNTS as garbage. As dung. He says it three times: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ”
Paul has used that word before in this letter. Here is is twice:
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility COUNT others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not COUNT equality with God a thing to be grasped.
Philippians 2:5–6 ESV
There have been debates on what it means “a thing to be grasped.” The ESV footnote I think is correct. He did not COUNT equality with God something “to be held onto for personal advantage.” Obviously, the Son’s equality with the Father is good (unlike unbelieving Judaism or paganism). But Jesus didn’t count in a something to be used for personal gain. Rather, it called him to serve others and even embrace humiliation and death to be crowned with resurrection and exaltation. Which is the same path that Paul has embraced:
that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead
Philippians 2:5–6 ESV
Jesus was the trailblazer and Paul is using his own history to show how we all must walk the path the God as made for us, counting everything as loss to gain Christ.
Paul literally died for his faith. He encourages the Philippians to persevere to the extent that they are persecuted and even killed. But the point, I think, of saying “by any means possible” is that the point is that we persevere in our callings. God began a good work in us. We are all going to suffer. The point is to remain faithful and embrace that trials God call us to and through to the resurrection of the dead.
But just as Jesus counted what he had as only of use in calling him to take the form of a servant, we need to count everything we have as loss compared to gaining Christ. Furthermore, we should especially willing to serve others as the way of dying and attaining to the resurrection.
Philippians 2 and 3 give us a similar message to Hebrew 11-12. Hebrews 11 is the great passage about faith. It begins: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Then it reviews the lives of the Saints before Christ who lived by faith. Then it climaxes in Hebrews 12 with Jesus who lived by faith by emptying himself and accepting the cross as a servant in order to receive the resurrection.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
And chapter 11 uses the same word, telling us about what the saints COUNTED as loss and COUNTED as gain. Hebrew 11:11= “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered [i.e. “COUNTED] him faithful who had promised.” But then what is said about Moses is more directly applicable”
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered [i.e. COUNTED] the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.
Hebrews 11:24–26 ESV
Moses didn’t count being Pharaoh’s heir as something for personal gain, but he emptied himself and identified with slaves. He counted the treasures of Egypt as loss, as rubbish, compared to knowing the sufferings of Christ.
I’m not necessarily making an argument for who is the author of Hebrews, but the concept between chapters 11 and 12 and Philippians 2 and 3 is very similar even to the point of using similar vocabulary.
And by the way, even when Paul uses the word in a seemingly less theologically-loaded way, a closer look raises the possibility that we is trying to illustrate the attitude he wants. Between the passage in the first part of chapter 2 and chapter 3, he writes:
I have thought [i.e. COUNTED] it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need, for he has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious.
Philippians 2:25–28 ESV
Why did Paul COUNT it necessary to send back Epaphroditus even though, when he was healthy Epaphroditus was helping him. Because he COUNTED the interests of the Philippian church more important than his own like he says we should all do. Indeed, his love for the Philippians made him anxious for them and eager for Epaphroditus to go back to them.
With all this in mind, perhaps you can see that Paul has set the stage for giving the Philippians a motto for the Christian life:
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
Philippians 3:12–16 ESV
Let go of the past! Eyes forward!
The core of the passage is in verses 13b and 14: “one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Don Garlington’s remarks in his sermon on the passage are helpful:
Now he tells us that his method for obtaining the prize is straining forward. Actually he says two things. There is a negative and a positive.
NEGATIVE
The negative thing is that he forgets the past. Do you find it easy to forget the past? Sometimes I find it very difficult to forget the past. Sometimes I find that the past gets in the way, that I can’t put it to rest, I just can’t let it be. I find myself mulling over the past, always bringing it up, dwelling upon aspects of it. Do you have that experience? The point here in the application is that nothing gets in the way of the future like the past. Of course Paul is speaking primarily of his non-Christian past, but there is such a thing as a Christian past as well. There is such a thing as ambition, such a thing as desire to do, to obtain, to be prominent among the brethren. You find the beginning of ministerial jealousy, for example, in that passage in Mark 10, where the sons of Thunder come forward to Jesus and say, ‘We want you to do whatever we ask of you.’ Not a very big request, was it? Just whatever we want, we want you to do that for us. ‘What do you want,’ he says, and they say ‘Well, we want to sit one at your right hand and one on your left. We want to call the shots. We want to be accountable and answerable only to you. We want to rule, we want to dominate. We want to be those who wield power. The power brokers in the church.’ You see, that attitude can be a part of one’s Christian past.
To us Paul is a very famous character, history has made him such, but in his day he was far more infamous than he was famous. He was this little Jew and the Corinthians can say that ‘when he is with us his bodily presence is weak.’ They despised his very person when they looked upon him. When Paul left that brilliant career as a Pharisee, in a sense he got more than he was bargaining for, because the door was opened to criticism. The door was open to obscurity. A life of self sacrifice, with very little reward to be found in this life. How such things might have drawn him down, how they might have discouraged him. How he might have taken his sight off the prize. But no, he says, ‘I forget the past,’ and you and I must forget the past.
POSITIVE
You and I must strain forward. That is the positive aspect, straining forward, a very familiar athletic metaphor that you find in Paul in several places. Here is an illustration of that. If you have seen the film ‘Chariots of Fire,’ you will know what I am talking about. We had a Seminary chapel speaker last year who, as a small lad in prison camp in China, knew Eric Liddel. Eric Liddel had a group of boys that he gathered around him. He would teach them the Bible and he would run with them as well. He could still run. Well in ‘Chariots of Fire,’ (our speaker confirmed this as being as true story) Eric Liddel was running in a race one day and he got knocked down, he was tripped up. He could have stayed on the ground, but he didn’t. He got up and he ran like a wild animal and won the race. This is the kind of thing Paul is talking about. The past can knock us to the ground. The past can debilitate us. It can make us forget that there is a glorious future for the people of God. We must strain forward for the prize.
This negative and positive description is framed by a deliberate paradox that causes it to stand out. Paul says in verse 15 that the “mature” should think the way he does. Yet he has just told them that he has not yet been made mature! Verse 12: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already matured” or “already made mature.” It is the same root word as in verse 15. If you want to keep it as “perfect” in English than change verse 15 to be consistent: “Let those of us who are perfect think this way…”
You arrive by realizing you haven’t arrived. Figuring out how to put others interests before your own not only takes sanctification but also wisdom. To do that without bitterness. Without ambition. Without being presumptuous or patronizing. It takes ongoing attention and prayer. Even Paul doesn’t want to claim he has arrived, except that he realizes how to go forward.
I feel like I sort of pulled Paul’s punch when he called his Jewish identity rubbish. I justify that because I am writing many words on a short passage when the best way to understand Paul would be to read the entire letter to the Philippians, and to read the all his letters, and to read the entire Bible.
So I am going to try to resist the temptation to do that here. I think if you read the letter of Philippians straight through (it’s not long!) with this stuff in mind, you might find he is continually illustrating and nuancing this basic point. But lets feel the raw force: “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
You realize, at this point, Paul isn’t just telling you to forget your personal advantages anymore. No: “forgetting what lies behind.” He is telling you to forget your losses. Your tragedies. Your wounds. Your headed to resurrection. None of your wounds are going to last. God will not only heal them but replace them with superpowers.
If you’re going to “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus” you are going to have to forgive others a lot as well as ask forgiveness. That, by itself, is going to require you to master “forgetting what lies behind.”
In 3:12, Paul said he counted stuff in his past as loss, but he obviously is not dwelling on it. No, he is busy “straining forward to what lies ahead.” That means your eyes need to look straight ahead.
Paul promises that “if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.” Remember: “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” That means when you come to moments in your life when you realize you have been doing it wrong, when you realize you have been neglecting something, when you realize you have wasted time in a wrong direction or inflicted damage of which you weren’t aware, you are called to master the art of humbly correcting your course and keep straining forward. Spending time regretting wasted time and lost opportunities is not helpful if it causes you to lose more time and miss more opportunities.
Forget the past; keep straining forward.
And it might be a good idea to recite Paul’s Forward Litany to yourself often: “ONE THING i DO: FORGETTING WHAT LIES BEHIND AND STRAINING FORWARD TO WHAT LIES AHEAD I PRESS ON THE GOAL FOR THE PRIZE OF THE UPWARD CALL OF GOD IN CHRIST JESUS.