“Does Robert Burns’ work reflect Calvinist influence?” Google that one and you’ll learn that while Burns’, Scotland’s 18th century poet laureate, like so many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, eschewed the Calvinism of his upbringing, it was on him in the way a wool sweater holds the charcoal aroma of a campfire. This was also true of Scottish greats like David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, France Hutcheson, and James Boswell.
Burns’ father was a God-fearing man who exposed him to the Bible and Calvinist theology. “Rabbie,” as he is known, felt hemmed in by it, satirized it, and rejected many of its key doctrines. Still this poet who gave us the lyrics to the familiar New Year’s anthem, Auld Lang Syne, just couldn’t help but let that ancestral Calvinism find its way into his verse.
Case in point, To a Mouse, “That wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,” of whom he waxed:
But, Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain
The best-laid schemes of mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
We’re grateful that an Englishman came along to make Burns’ Gaelic clearer to us. We know this stanza more familiarly as:
But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes of mice and men
Go oft awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Was Burns mocking Calvinism here? Maybe. Maybe, not. But we’ll take it, for we know it to be true. Our best-laid schemes do often go awry. And we do often experience “grief and pain,” and we do so “for promised joy.” Such is the essence of the “Serious Joy” we teach at Bethlehem College and Seminary.
Some months ago we set about organizing an annual appeal to our generous contributors. We conducted interviews, wrote articles, took photographs, produced videos, analyzed databases, set typography, proof read, prepared print-ready mechanicals, checked work on press, moved materials between multiple suppliers, ordered postage and packaging, and collated and stuffed several thousand packages for dispatch to our supporters…all “like clockwork” as a man-centered manager might boast, and as I at some point probably did.
But then, “That wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,”
Our best-laid plans went awry. At just one stage of this multi-faceted operation a box of material was not delivered to its intended destination and was returned to the printer to spend its Christmas holiday with the other boxes in inventory there. Only on the day after Christmas, to our “pain and grief,” did we discover that some 400 of our most faithful givers were, thus far, ignored in this important year-end program of communication. We’re grateful to God for Leah Bruneau on our staff, and the employees of our printer, direct mail house, and the USPS who responded in a day to set these packages on their way.
And still we know it is all “for our promised joy.” Oh, Ol’ Rabbie may have scoffed at his Calvinist pedigree, but we sure don’t. We believe absolutely in an absolutely Sovereign God who is working good for us in all things; who doesn’t need any of our labors or units of operations to fulfill his purposes. He doesn’t need a witty copywriter, an artful graphic designer, or a dependable courier to fulfill his purposes. He uses such means, and the given gifts of thousands of others, to undertake the work of his works. But he doesn’t need them, not one of them. All he wants to do he can do with just a thought or word.
It is the joy of every administrator, faculty member, staffer, student, alumnus, volunteer, and contributor at Bethlehem College and Seminary to labor with you in this work, whether our plans come to fruition or ”Gang aft agley.” We trust as always, that material and spiritual provision for The Serious Joy Scholarship is all and entirely in God’s hands, and that he will supply all of our needs in full.
However Robert Burns may have meant his rebellious verse, God meant it for good. We can still see our glorious doctrines in The Mouse, and without Auld Lange Syne, contemporary songwriters Dustin Michael Kensrue and Chadwick William Gardner would not have been inspired to write All Glory Be to Christ, which to the tune commonly applied to Burns’ original lyrics, proclaims:
Should nothing of our efforts stand
No legacy survive
Unless the Lord does raise the house
In vain its builder strive
To you who boast tomorrow’s gain
Tell me what is your life
A mist that vanishes at dawn
All glory be to Christ.
William Burnes (1721-1784), Rabbie’s Calvinist father, must now be a smilin’.
Happy New Year, friends of Bethlehem College and Seminary! May God continue to stir here and in you a passion for his supremacy in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ, and may we come to see in this New Year, more clearly than ever, that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
Rick Segal is Vice President of Advancement and a Lecturer of History and Political Philosophy.
P.S. Our Alex Steddom International Student Fund also remains incompletely resourced for the current year. Please pray whether you might also be called to make a gift to this important aspect of our ministry.