Joel Belz
August 10, 1941 – February 4, 2024
I first met Joel in December of 1993 when I as a very young adult interviewed for a position in the God's World Book Club.
It didn’t feel like an interview. It just felt like an introduction. Rather than grill me with questions about my experience and qualifications, he enthusiastically shared with me what God’s World Publications was about by quoting the verse
The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,
The world and they that dwell in it. (Psalm 24)
Over the next few years, I discovered that Joel and I shared a personality trait: We are both idealists. He is more of a visionary idealist and I a metaphorical idealist, but we still found connection in the struggle that is living as idealists while being people who fall short of even our own ideals, in a world that has fallen also from the ideal. We both had the capacity to reach real emotional and anticipatory highs—and to fall low when our expectations weren’t realized.
I remember one time when both of us were at a lower point, we had a conversation about the sanctification process for idealists, who can so readily turn our “shoulds” into idols. Letting go of those “shoulds,” those idols, is a painful part of spiritual growth.
And through those types of conversations, I began to form a more right view of how to navigate this life, this work, this world, relationships with family, others, and God himself.
We tend to think that the opposite of Idealism is Realism, but I no longer think that’s true, and I learned this because of living and working alongside Joel for three decades.
The real opposite of Idealism is Cynicism. Both are incorrect—out of focus, but easy to slide into one or the other. We are either/or people. Either it’s all perfect or it’s all rotten. Either we worship utopian perfection, or we declare it all worthless nihilism, and essentially worship nothingness.
But People of the Good News ought not see it that way.
Instead, if we turn the lens of scripture on our tendencies, we don’t see Either/Or. We see the Both/And of not Idealism and Cynicism, but of
Optimism and Realism.
God is at the same time realistic and optimistic about us, because of WHO he is and what he is able to accomplish, and we have reason to be both realistic and optimistic as well.
“He who began a good work in you WILL see it to completion,” he promises.
I cling to that personally and optimistically—about myself and about each of you.
“I know the plans I have for you,” DECLARES the Lord. “Plans to prosper and not harm you. Plans to give you a HOPE and a future.”
I cling to that for all of us, corporately. For the universal church.
Because of this hope that grounds all of life for believers—and did so for Joel—even the idealists can tuck away their “should bes” and open themselves up to live in the real: We each have a cross to bear, and under it, we will stumble. We will fail. We will harm ourselves and others, and circumstances beyond our control will also crush expectations, cause harm, weary us… but never rob us of the hope that is finished already in Christ’s entrance into our weary, broken world, the life he lived, his death, resurrection to overcome it all, and ascension as proof that all truly is settled and accepted as good. The Father knows our frame. He is realistic about us. He says that he will uphold us with HIS mighty right hand, so that when we fall—and you and I will—we will not be cast headlong. Realistic, and optimistic at the same time.
A few years ago, after Joel had received his Parkinson’s diagnosis but he was still coming in to the office regularly, he and I met in the kitchen here at #12. If you’ve spent any time in the kitchen at #12, then you know that many good things happen there—that don’t have to do with food.
We were having another rich talk, but both of us were feeling the weight of the realities of this life, and I asked him a rather naïve question—or a question that was seeking a naïve answer. The idealist was trying again to come to the surface.
I asked, “Joel, when do we get to coast a bit? When does life become smooth sailing?”
The normal answer even believers give to that question is the idealist’s fuel and fodder: It's just over the next life hump. When the deadline is past; when that degree is complete; when the kids move out; etc. We’re always waiting for what comes next—and it never seems to come.
But Joel didn’t give me that answer. He looked at me lovingly, like a father, and he said directly but gently, “Rebecca, it’s uphill all the way.”
That statement didn’t immediately give me joy, but I will tell you that I think of it
every. single. day.
Every day, as I pray to take up my own cross for what’s ahead, I think with thanksgiving of the honestly of that statement. That’s reality.
It is uphill all the way.
So, Rebecca, lay aside your idealism, and pick up the reality of today’s requirements and challenges, but not without hope; with optimism—because Christ has taken my actual burden on himself, and he said, “It is finished.”
We labor on, uphill all the way, and that is true. But it is grounded in the optimistic reality that our future is secure. We have a living hope, born out of Christ’s resurrection, which is held for us even now, an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading! Joel knows that face to face now. It is not at all like my earthly ideals, and it will never disappoint.
And because of Joel’s “brutal” honesty to tell me the truth that it is uphill all the way, I am compelled every morning to set my sights on that eternal hope, and take the next step that today holds, to press on toward the goal, as Joel did.
Joel has finished the race, and he now joins that great cloud of witnesses who surround us. So, let us take up our crosses but lay off the weights of both cynicism and idealism, and run with endurance that real uphill race that lies before us.
In the studio in Asheville with Joel and Carol Esther Belz, August 2021.
