We were planning a memorial service for Lew Smedes, and I asked his wife, Doris, whether Lew had some favorite biblical passages that I should use for my homily. “Well, of course, there was the hound of heaven passage in Psalm 139,” she immediately responded. Of course. More than any of my other friends, Lew was a person who clearly felt hounded by God, and it was easy to imagine him praying that psalm: “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?”
For him the sense of God’s presence was for the most part a source of spiritual and vocational comfort. He finished what turned out to be his last book just before he died at age 81 of a head injury he received when he fell from a ladder in December 2002. The book, My God and I: The Life of a Chastened Calvinist—he called it “a theological memoir”—will be published soon by Eerdmans. He tells there how he first discovered that it can be a joyful experience to acknowledge the divine presence. He had transferred to Calvin College after a few years as a spiritual misfit at the Moody Bible Institute, and his first class at Calvin was in English Composition. His teacher, Jacob Vandenbosch, “introduced me that day,” he testified, “to a God the likes of whom I had never even heard about.” This God, Smedes discovered,
liked elegant sentences and was offended by dangling modifiers. Once you believe this, where can you stop? If the Maker of the Universe admired words well put together, think of how he must love sound thought well put together, and if he loved sound thinking, how he must love a Bach concerto and if he loved a Bach concerto think of how he prized any human effort to bring a foretaste, be it ever so small, of his Kingdom of Justice and peace and happiness to the victimized people of the world. In short, I met the Maker of the Universe who loved the world he made and was dedicated to its redemption. I found the joy of the Lord, not at a prayer meeting, but in English Composition 101.
But Lew could also be profoundly uncomfortable—even impatient—in God’s inescapable presence. While he learned good Kuyperian Calvinism at Calvin College, he would have nothing to do with the triumphalism that Abraham Kuyper’s disciples often displayed. Jesus Christ may claim ownership over (to use Kuyper’s famous manifesto) “every square inch of the entire creation,” but Smedes worried much about the profound suffering that continues to take place on all of those square inches. And he was not afraid to tell God directly that he, Lewis Benedict Smedes, was beginning to wonder why the Lord was letting all of this bad stuff go on for so long.
That sensitivity to suffering, especially in its systemic forms, was what first attracted me to his way of viewing things. I discoved Lew Smedes when I was a graduate student in the 1960s, during a time when I was struggling with the issues of racism and militarism. The evangelical movement was giving folks like me no guidance in our wrestlings. Then I came upon The Reformed Journal, and especially Smedes’s wonderful little pieces in those pages on social issues. It was clear that he was solidly orthodox and that he hated injustice. When I was offered a teaching position at Calvin College, I was thrilled at the thought that I would actually be his colleague. But the experience turned out to be long delayed. He left Calvin for Fuller just as I arrived there, and it took 17 more years for us to be members of the same faculty.
Smedesian ethics focused especially on the tragic dimensions of our sinful condition. This was an important element in his popular appeal. Two of his books, Sex for Christians and Forgive and Forget, were big sellers—you could buy the forgiveness book at airport newstands for a while, and the sales got a bump when he discussed the topic on Oprah’s show. He had a knack for letting very ordinary people sense that he understood their deepest dilemmas and temptations.
His emphasis on the tragic, along with his refusal to settle for easy solutions, also got him into trouble at times with the evangelical constituency. Actually, on some issues it got me into more trouble than it did him: when I became Fuller’s president, it fell to me to answer the letters from folks who were worried about his refusal to give the standard evangelical answers on moral issues. But even when I thought he was pushing a bit too far—which on my count he did in only about seven of the thousands of pages of eloquent prose that he published—I always willingly defended him as a person who modeled both ethical integrity and pastoral sensitivity.
Smedes did many things with great style. Many people claimed him as their favorite writer. Some folks also said he was the best preacher they had ever heard. His students at Fuller typically describe his class lectures as memorable—although they often added that it was worth showing up just to hear him pray at the beginning of each session.
I found him a good debating partner. A few weeks before he died, we had a leisurely breakfast together. As was typical in these meetings, we—two Dutch Calvinists sitting in a California coffee shop—spent most of the time arguing about God. I always liked arguing with him about that subject. We did not settle our differences. But now he at least is able to take the argument to a new level.
Richard J. Mouw is president of Fuller Theological Seminary.
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