I Get An Attitude Adjustment

If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?  And if in a safe land you are so trusting, what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan? – Jeremiah 12:5

Jeremiah was complaining about all the wicked who prospered and were even, apparently, planted by God and allowed to take root.  It seemed to the prophet, as it often seems to us, that God has a strange sense of justice.  Sometimes the Lord has about enough of whining.  Jeremiah had experienced some conflict with various members of his family out in the village of Anathoth.  He was going to have to confront the men of Jerusalem.  He was going from minor league persecution up to the Majors.  God says to Jeremiah, and to us, I think, that we have not had nearly as much trouble as we will have.  Wait, does the Lord think we will be somehow comforted by this?  Is God channeling R. Lee Ermey? 

I am going to veer off into the field a bit.  A lot of us seem to prefer the certainty and security of bondage to the uncertainty and opportunity of freedom.  People who start their own businesses are braver than I am.  Wage-slavery appeals to me.  I really don’t mind working for the man so long as those checks come in every couple of weeks.  It helps that the work I do is something I happen to enjoy, but I have worked and would work again just for the security if it came to that.  

Yet, I know that outside of Christ, there is no security.  Nor are there any guarantees that because I am a Christian, no matter how devout and obedient, that my earthly life is going to always go to suit me.  Knowing that, I have a choice.  One might try to build “pile”, to use a term from Allan Quatermain, as a bulwark against life’s vagaries and setbacks.  Another may say that he will, like Blanche DuBois, rely on the kindness of strangers.  I believe in making good use of opportunities and of realizing there’s at least a chance I might live to be too old to work, but I also know that trusting in “a safe land” is an illusion.   Youth, strength, health, wealth, power, etc., all these things are passing away.  Enjoy them while they last.  The danger is that I become so enamored of them that I try to cling to them after their time has passed. 

God reminds me that reality is, and that He is.  I can complain if I like, but it is only going to wear me down that much more quickly.  I can face it.  I can whine about it.  I can face and whine about it.  I can do what I have to do and trust, not in safety and security, but in the wisdom, grace and goodness of God. 

The righteous man perishes, and no one lays it to heart; devout men are taken away, while no one understands.  For the righteous man is taken away from calamity; he enters into peace; they rest in their beds who walk in their uprightness (Isaiah 57:1-2). 

Stumbling in a Peaceful Land

The righteous one perishes, and no one takes it to heart; faithful men are swept away, with no one realizing that the righteous one is swept away from the presence of evil.

He will enter into peace – they will rest upon their beds – everyone who lives uprightly. – Isaiah 57:1-2

Last Wednesday, in a small community west of Jefferson City, Missouri, a nine-year old girl left a friend’s house to walk a quarter mile back to her own home. She had made the trip before. The area is rural and quiet and safe. She never made it home. When I heard the story, I started making assumptions. I assumed the nine-year-old had been abducted. I assumed she had been snatched by a child molester, or possibly a non-custodial parent – I certainly hoped the latter.

Then we heard that this little child whose picture we had seen on the newscasts was dead. The police were said to have in custody a “person of interest” – a juvenile, older than the victim. I assumed it was a boy. The police said they had been led to the person of interest by notes. I assumed they probably meant text messages on the little girl’s cell phone. I assumed sex was involved.

It turns out all my assumptions were wrong – except possibly the last one – I’m not sure. There seems to be no official statement about the identity of the murderer, but a reliable law enforcement source said that the perpetrator was a fifteen-year-old girl. The notes were actually notes written on paper that the victim had received from her killer. When the fifteen-year-old was confronted with the evidence, she confessed to the crime and led authorities to the body of the nine-year-old. The source claimed that the killer stated her motive as wanting to know what it felt like to kill someone. In other words, it was a thrill killing.

This didn’t happen in downtown Chicago, the South Bronx, Detroit, or South Central LA. The roads are two-lane blacktops or dirt. The name of the town is St. Martins. It’s named, like many of the villages that dot the map as one backtracks the Missouri River west from St. Louis, for the Catholic Church that centers the community. The people have predominately Rhineland surnames that still strike the ear of a Scotch-Irish hillbilly like an out-of-time flathead Ford.

I never thought of myself as having lived a sheltered life. As I’ve said before, at least in childhood, it was somewhat idyllic -- but not sheltered. I’ve never lived in a bubble. Perhaps, though, I’ve lived too long. I understand the statistics of it – that every so often something goes wrong in somebody’s head, and they become psychopaths. It is more likely to happen where there are higher concentrations of people if for no other reason than more people mean more bad people – even if the rate of the failure to be human is the same.

I have known wicked people. Some would say I was pretty wicked myself at one time, maybe still at times. I’ve been around the insane, the criminally insane, and the worst kinds of criminals, and that’s just at the family reunion. Still, this baffles me. All I could think of was the line from “Folsom Prison Blues”: I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. But instead of the bass voice of Johnny Cash channeling that awful sentiment, it is the voice of a girl -- barely more than a child herself -- a girl who should be giggling about school and boys and her plans for life. And she’s not talking about gunning down a stranger and something of an equal, but a helpless child whom she knew, with whom she must have cultivated some kind of relationship, built some trust, an innocent child who might have looked up to and admired the older girl, been flattered by her attention.

We have, like the ancient kingdom of Israel, not merely ignored the sin in our midst, not just tolerated it, but celebrated it. We have come to the place where we call right wrong and wrong right. God does not send judgment on a nation like ours – He doesn’t have to. We draw it to us, pull it down on our own heads, all the while thinking it will never happen to us. But in His mercy, God places His hands on those few righteous among us – there are always a few who do not need the fire’s purging. There are always a few who are not called to the battle, whose eyes are fixed always and only on the King. Those He gathers quickly to His side, to rest and peace and glory. They will not be with us in the fight, but their passing on in peace to their place is a sign that we are under siege and the battle is at hand.

When the Righteous Ride into the Sunset

The righteous one perishes, and no one takes it to heart; faithful men are swept away, with no one realizing that the righteous one is swept away from the presence of evil. He will enter into peace – they will rest on their beds – everyone who lives uprightly. – Isaiah 57:1,2

Good and evil are not in balance. The system is not dualistic. The outcome is not in doubt.

The nature of good is absolute, and good exists on its own. It does not need evil to create or define it. Evil, on the other hand, is derived. It is a deviation, a perversion of good. Sin is sometimes defined as achieving a legitimate end by illegitimate means. Evil seeks to achieve some good, but does so in a way that is damaging or negative. Even in an action as repugnant as child molestation, the twisted mind of the perpetrator does not seek the destruction of an innocent life for its own sake but for the sick pleasure the molester derives from it.

Men may come to call what is evil good and call good evil, as is often the case today. Still, evil cannot triumph in an ultimate sense, for it carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It must always war with good or it ceases to exist. The more it conquers good, the more certain and swift its defeat. Sometimes, as Isaiah tells us, the righteous fail and are swept away, but they are swept away to peace and rest, leaving the wicked to reap the harvest of their own unintended consequences.

God indeed uses the wickedness of man, at times. As Romans 8:28 assures us that He is able to make all things work together for good, while acknowledging that not all things are good. God absorbs and assimilates evil into His overall plan. The devil builds a wall, and God uses it as a steppingstone. The devil sends a storm, and God uses the tempest to climb higher like an eagle soaring on the winds. The devil makes waves, and God walks on the water. Though disaster and tragedy may assail my life, such things will not defeat me unless I surrender to them. I am so touched and inspired by Ben’s remarkable stories of overcoming by faith at One Cosmos at Sea. I cannot imagine how anyone could read Ben’s testimonies and not see the hand of God at work.

I was in a bookstore in Iowa the other day and in the course of paying for some gifts, the cashier discovered that we were from near the city where her son is attending college. My wife asked what year the young man was in at school. The woman replied, “He’s a junior. He would have been a senior.” She then went on to explain that their daughter, a few years younger than their son, had fallen ill at seventeen and died within a few months. The boy had dropped out of college and returned home to support his sister and his parents. There was a picture of the girl on the counter. As the mother told how she looked forward to seeing her daughter again, this big old hillbilly began to cry. There was no bitterness, no resentment, no hatred of God or protest of unfairness. “The righteous one is swept away from the presence of evil.” The mother understood and respected the reality. She missed her child, longed to see her again, but she knew where she was.

It’s also important to realize that some things which are tragic are not evil. Suppose I choose to visit some remote wilderness area. In the course of my exploration, I encounter a hungry grizzly bear that kills and devours me. You cannot say that anything evil has occurred. Though it is the consequence of living in a fallen world where life is sustained by bloodshed, the bear did no wrong, any more than I do wrong by having a steak for supper. My personal feelings about the matter aside, I can’t accuse the bear of evil intent.

When our purpose here is fulfilled, we will depart. Sometimes our departure is part of our purpose. We can trust God that He knows how to separate the wheat from the tares. Wickedness will run on until it comes to the abyss from which it cannot return. There is no need to fear the triumph of evil, but there is reason to strive against it. I say again, “Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good” (Romans 12:21).