Rules of Engagement

You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men -- Mark 7:8

Much of religion is little more than a way for truth to be compromised, and human thinking to be justified.  When people talk about how God told them to do this or that, we ought to listen carefully for what those people are going to get out of it.  The “will of Allah” or the “will of God” too often become political tools for manipulating and controlling a group or a nation. 

Jesus never called His disciples to political revolution.  He did not come to overthrow the Roman government or to establish a particular form of government.  When He quoted Isaiah 61 in the synagogue (Luke 4:18-19), the good news He was proclaiming to the poor was not income redistribution or Marxist class struggle. The captives He came to liberate were not those in physical chains.  He came to set all of us free from the bondage of sin, from the prison of distorted perspectives, and from the vanities and illusions of a merely material existence. 

Christianity can work and has worked in every imaginable political system.  It has been nice to have had the opportunity to live in a prosperous, mostly free-market economy, to have enjoyed the benefits of political and religious liberty and the enlightenment and innovation it brings.  But it isn’t necessary. 

To be a Christian means being filled with the life of Christ, to walk in humility, meekness, kindness, and love.  The Romans led those First Century followers of Christ out into the Coliseum to be tortured, humiliated and killed.  Tyrants of all kinds – some calling themselves Christians as well, have oppressed believers and sought to defeat the Truth across nearly twenty centuries since.    

I am not a prophet, but I can read the writing on the wall.  The western world has shredded, squandered and disavowed its Christian heritage.  Our political leaders, intellectuals, and media idols call good evil and evil good.  The seeds have been sown and sprouted.  The stalk has reached full height, matured and ripened.  The reaping is at hand.  A whole lot of people are going to get exactly what they want, and they are not going to like it at all. 

Regardless of the way the world goes, the commandments of God are the same.  I am to love the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love my neighbor as myself.  I am to take up my cross daily and die to self.  I am to give no place to selfishness, self-justification, or pride.  If I am called to lay down my life, I am to do it joyously.  I think I can do this.  The Lord has never asked me to do anything that I couldn’t do. 

One more thing, though, that those who despise and mock Christians sometimes fail to grasp.  When I say that I have to love my neighbor as myself, it means all my neighbors, especially the weak, the innocent, and the helpless.  I am obligated to protect them as much as I can for as long as I can by whatever means necessary.      

I'll Stand Here

And next to him was Shammah, the son of Agee the Hararite. The Philistines gathered together at Lehi, where there was a plot of ground full of lentils, and the men fled from the Philistines.  But he took his stand in the midst of the plot and defended it and struck down the Philistines, and the LORD worked a great victory.  – 2 Samuel 23:11-12

I don’t think this was particularly strategic ground in any normal military sense.  We often find ourselves in struggles and confrontations with the world, and the issues seem minor.  It’s hardly worth the conflict or the effort.  We are told to be at peace with people as much as is possible from our side.  Blowing up about every little thing or blowing things out of proportion probably doesn’t do much to advance the kingdom.  

I’m sure there were those among the soldiers who were fleeing who thought Shammah picked a poor “hill to die on”.  Who cares about that pea patch?  That’s the whole Philistine army coming across there.  Sometimes, though, it is the small battles upon which the outcome of the larger war turns. 

We might find ourselves wondering if some of the “insignificant ground” we have surrendered as Christians has led to us being under such an intense siege in the culture war these days.  If we had been more diligent in condemning the belittling of marriage through no-fault divorce and moving marriage from a sacrament of the church to a profane, civil ceremony blessed by the state (profane in the sense of not being sacred within the church), we might not be looking at the travesty of the state acknowledging, approving, and enforcing the ludicrous concept of homosexual marriage. 

If we had pulled our children from public schools and refused to support a centralized, government-run education system when the Supreme Court began to separate knowledge from morality, we might not have a generation of virtue-challenged, moral morons today.

But these things have happened.  This ground has been lost.  Maybe all we have left is a pea patch, and, if that’s all we have then it is worth defending.  Maybe that’s what Shammah thought.  I’m tired of giving up ground.  It reminds of the scene in The Warriors where Cowboy and Ajax are running from the Baseball Furies.  Cowboy says he doesn’t think he can make it.  Ajax asks him if he is sure that he can’t make it.  Cowboy says that he is sure.  Ajax says, Good.  He had had enough running.  He was ready to stand and fight and let people know what the Warriors were made of.    

The Lord put it in Shammah's heart to have had enough running, enough compromising, enough backing down and giving in.  We can’t speak for others.  We can’t say if this is their place to stand, but I think we can know when it is ours. 

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm (Ephesians 6:13).

Game Over

Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.  Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.  – 1 Kings 19:2-3

Here is how the King James and some other versions translate verse 3:  “And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life ….”  Elijah became fearful because he saw Jezebel’s threat.  Elijah became fearful because he stopped looking at the Lord and turned his attention to human thinking.  Certainly, it was proper for him to take Jezebel seriously.  She was, after all, quite evil, fully capable of murder (1 Kings 21:1-19) and other vile crimes.  There is no question that, given the opportunity, she would have had Elijah slain. 

The prophet had, we recall, experienced a great victory over apostasy in his challenge to the prophets of the false god Baal up on Mount Carmel.  The drought that had devastated Israel for three and a half years had been broken through Elijah’s intercession, for ... [t]he effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.  He was, or should have been, flying high, at the top of his game.

I hear there was a football game yesterday.  It didn’t involve the Chiefs, Cowboys or Cardinals (I only root, apparently, for teams that start with ‘C’), so I don’t know who won.  But I do know that the losing team is talking about next year, saying they will be back while lamenting lost chances and missed opportunities.  What they won’t do (since it wasn’t the Raiders) is attack the winning team in the parking lot with saps and brass knuckles. 

This is the difference between football and the devil.  The devil does not let you savor your victory.  He does not take time outs.  He pays no attention to the calendar or the clock and he does not recognize when the game is over.  Often we are most vulnerable to attacks of various kinds, to threats as well as seductions, when we have met and overcome a challenge in life.  I mean, we've beaten back the Orcs.  We're supposed to be able to cruise for a while.  That’s the way it works in the commercials and the movies.  Miller Time!  Happily Ever After!

Elijah could call down fire from heaven as he had done up on Carmel.  He had been fearless and invincible in confronting wickedness.  He thought, no doubt, that great revival would follow his victory over the idolaters.  He might have expected Jezebel and Ahab to be cowed, even repentant, for he had demonstrated to all of Israel the fallaciousness of Jezebel’s god.  It may have been that, given the nation’s renewed devotion to the LORD, Jezebel threatened because she did not dare to actually attack the man of God at that time.  We don’t know.  Elijah didn’t know. 

He knew she hated him.  He knew that allowing her to kill him would dishearten the people.  He suddenly felt like a failure.  The only thing he knew for certain is that he had to get away, but he could not get away from himself.  There was no place to hide from his depression and frustration or from the voices in his head.  Maybe God's plan was for Jezebel to try and kill Elijah, for them to have a showdown at high noon, and for Elijah to take the witch out with a bolt of lightning.  Whatever it was Elijah couldn't do it because he was too scared and too tired and too hopeless, so he ran.

Of course this is more than history, but we’re apt to forget that the prophets and leaders depicted in the Bible were not superheroes.  James says, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours … (James 5:17).  Like us, he was imperfect and sometimes he messed up.  I think it would not be unreasonable in this instance to conclude that Elijah failed. 

So, God said, Hey, man, after all you’ve seen Me do, you give up?  Well, guess what, buddy, I am done with you. 

Wait, that’s not quite how it went, is it?  No, God was merciful to Elijah, understanding that he had been pushed to his limits by the stress and strain of the confrontation on the mountain.  He sent an angel to the prophet to give him sleep and food.  He met Elijah at Sinai and gave him a new mission.  In the end, He took Elijah up to heaven without allowing him to go the way of the grave. 

Beware but also be encouraged:   For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust (Psalms 103:14).

The Belt of Truth

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. -- John 8:44

Most of the time I try not to get too subjective.  I try to stay objective, to look at things from a wider view than just how I feel about it or how it affects me.  I don't mean to imply that I am able to do that cleanly, but I try.  This means that I try not to attribute the worst possible motives to what other people do.  When I read the words of Jesus to those who were attacking Him, my first impulse is to think He is engaging in a rhetorical rebuttal trying to bring those people to their senses.  But I don't think Jesus goes for the hyperbolic much.  When God speaks, that's the way it is.  He literally cannot overstate His case. 

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places  (Ephesians 6:12).

I suppose I am a stranger in a strange land because I find Paul's statement to be very reassuring.  The real nature of our very real war is spiritual.  It works itself out on the material plane sure enough, but there's no need to get too concerned about the temporal, visible aspects.  If we take care of the actual, the derivative will take care of itself. 

There is no reason to ever expect your enemy to admit that you are right.  There is no reason to think that "the spiritual forces of evil" will ever concede.  The great error of "good" people is thinking that going about their business is all that is required, that battling evil is radical or unnecessary.  The truth is that you and I are in a war from the moment we enter the womb, whether we like it or not, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.  The physical face of the enemy changes from time to time, but "the cosmic powers over this present darkness" remain — eternal, cold, and relentless as the blackness between the stars. 

As Peter said, Jesus " went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him".  He was not oppressing people.  He was not making people sick.  He was not doing anything bad or objectionable.  Yet there were people who wanted to kill Him.  This only makes sense if we realize that breaking through illusions is the way that the powers of darkness and evil are defeated.  Illusions are lies, and they are destroyed by the truth.  The devil cannot attack the truth directly.  It is simply not possible.  Instead he attacks the motives and integrity of the individual messenger.  In the case of Jesus, when the agents of Satan could find no other accusation, they became indignant that Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, as if speaking a word or touching someone were a violation of the Mosaic injunction.  The ridiculousness of the accusation is lost in the vehemence of the attack.

We can see the same thing today.  Turn on the radio, watch a news program on television, listen — if you can endure it — to the arguments of the leftists, and you will hear the "passion" of their arguments.  According to them, people like me hate homosexuals because we are against gay marriage.  We hate black and poor people because we want to require a photo identification for voting.  We hate Mexicans because we think that a nation's borders should be secure.  I can expose any of these lies, but let me pick on homosexuals. 

One of my wife's cousins is a homosexual man.  I have known him for decades.  We used to get drunk together.  I love the guy and consider him a good friend.  His father, my wife's uncle, was kind of a jerk.  I think my friend suffered because of that.  I think there are a number of reasons why he was drawn to homosexuality.  I certainly do not object to him having a happy and fulfilling life.  Here's the problem — he is not going to have a happy life.  He is going to suffer the consequences and the torment of pursuing an illusion. 

The proponents of gay marriage will point to "successful" homosexuals, like Elton John, but fame and money can buy a lot of pain killers, a lot of mind-numbing.  Even the most contented homosexuals often contend with addictions and over-indulgence trying to maintain the illusion and keep out the truth.  Like adultery or any other kind of sexual immorality, there is a price to pay for the pleasure.  Homosexuals frequently pay it in a very physical way with the break down of their immune system.  I am not willing to accept that an Elton John or an Ellen Degeneres would not be happier living a straight, moral and godly life.  They would be filled with joy and peace once the lies in their lives were exposed and driven out.  That's not to even point out that for every apparently happy "gay" person there are a thousand living in daily anguish and torment in the depths of their souls.  It is because I love people like my friend that I am opposed to sanctioning homosexuality.  I am equally against infidelity in marriage and sex outside of marriage for heterosexuals.  I am opposed to the idea of divorce.  And it is all for the same reason — it is based on lies. 

I don't have to go out and personally, physically keep people from committing sexual sins because I think it is wrong.  I am quite confident that God has the power to deliver people from their bondage if they are willing to accept the truth.  If they want to cling to the lies, that's not my problem.  Yet, despite all that I have just said, despite that obviously caring tone, despite the liberty that is implied, a person from the other side will read it and call me "intolerant" and "a hater".  Why?  Because I am telling the truth.  The Spirit of God witnesses to my words and to my love in the heart of my opponent, and he or she feels compelled to attack me.  I will be labeled intolerant, not for doing anything to anyone, actually interfering in another person's life, but for holding to and expressing a point of view — a truthful point of view. 

Though I use homosexuality as an easy example, the battle has many fronts, be it social issues, economic issues, education, families, oppressive governments, political corruption, and on and on.  I confess that I have all too often felt overwhelmed.  I have retreated into complacency and apathy.  I have insulated myself with innocuous diversions and isolated myself with petty pleasures while saying that I am not able to do anything.  In other words, I have embraced a lie of false peace.  Real peace is in the battle on the front line. 

Now where did I put my belt?

Not Better than the Rest

I wait quietly before God,
for my victory comes from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress where I will never be shaken.

So many enemies against one man—
all of them trying to kill me.
To them I’m just a broken-down wall
or a tottering fence.
They plan to topple me from my high position.
They delight in telling lies about me.
They praise me to my face
but curse me in their hearts.

Let all that I am wait quietly before God,
for my hope is in him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress where I will not be shaken.
My victory and honor come from God alone.
He is my refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach me.
O my people, trust in him at all times.
Pour out your heart to him,
for God is our refuge.

(Psalm 62:1-8, New Living Translation)

I have to leave First John, at least momentarily, to deal with the subject of war. Earlier this week, spiritual warfare was a topic that came to my attention repeatedly. There is no advancement on the road to freedom that does not involve battle. One of the reasons a day of slack or a time of slack every day is so important to us is that it permits us get our feet set for the blows that come at us. The more the enemy assails us, the more we need our rest and refuge.

Weaponry I have. Strength I have most of the time. What I need once in a while is a place to hide. Without some slack, I get shell-shocked. Battle-rattle will cause us to do stupid things, make mistakes, stumble, and leave ourselves unguarded and vulnerable. In the political sphere we can see that this is a favorite tactic of power-hungry politicians. The opponents of political freedom want to keep throwing things at us, keep us back on our heels, on the ropes, covering. The same is true of our spiritual enemies. The prince of the power of the air prefers to keep us from thinking and, certainly, from praying and meditating.

So many enemies against one man -- I’ve said something like that dozens of times lately. A tottering fence is the perfect description of my position the last few days. It seems that any gust of wind would overthrow me. Of course I don’t have a high position in the world, but I am seated in Christ above all, and it is from there the enemy would see me toppled.

But I overcome in quietness. My battle plan is to wait quietly on the Lord. I do have a stronghold wherein I may hide safely and securely. To the world and those who oppose me I may look like I am about to fall, yet, as I trust, falling is impossible. It seems crazy to rest when so many things are happening, when everything seems to be falling apart, when there is so much that needs to be done. To fall into the frenzy of activity, to become one with the fearful words and images that flow toward us in a filthy, unending stream seems a more rational response. It is wrong.

The battle is won by stillness of heart.

And the Walls Come A'Tumblin' Down

For although we are walking in the flesh, we do not wage war in a fleshly way, since the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments and every high-minded thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. – 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

The essence of the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Recognizing that the Lord was wise, good, and kind in a human sense is not transformative. That is what Paul defines as “knowing Christ after the flesh”. Jesus does something only He can do -- something only God can do. He identifies with us, taking our sins upon Himself, and paying for them with His own blood. But there is more. The Last Adam also gives the old Adam what he had had coming for a long time. When Jesus was nailed to a cross, He took Adam with Him. After all Adam was created in the likeness and image of God, he did not go down easily. It was mano-a-mano. The only way to do it was for Jesus to embrace Adam so closely that they could not be separated in life. It was risky business, but it meant they were nailed hand-in-hand to the same cross. They came down together. They were buried together. But only One came out alive.

Every battle we face as believers involves a meta-battle. Fortunately for us it is a battle that has already been won by Jesus. By faith we can appropriate the spiritual victory the Lord gained in crucifying the old nature.

We’re walking through this world looking like everybody else. I, for example, am saddled with a particularly rough looking tent. I’m pretty sure that, not only did it come off the slightly irregular rack, but it was probably a return after somebody used it to camp out in a weekend hailstorm. The flesh we walk in puts some restraints and limitations on us, no doubt. To overcome, we reject the weaponry and power of the old nature which is rendered inoperable, put out of commission through the power of the Cross. Instead we take up the weapons of the Spirit and His power.

With the meta-battle behind us, we are enabled to come against, and potentially demolish strongholds in our lives -- those things that hinder, block, and entrap us. And of what are these high-walled fortresses constructed but arguments and thoughts. Wait, I believe they use some hubris in the mortar mix. There we go: arrogance, pride, fleshly wisdom, and carnal philosophy are the walls, and they are defended by fear.

Someone may say that, yes, some people may be battling mind parasites, but my problems are real, external threats. It may be true enough that the psychotics, the neurotics, and the delusional need to take “every thought captive”, but that does not apply to me. Whatever you think. I believe that argument is itself something of a delusion.

I believe that I do not war against flesh and blood, but against rulers, authorities, world powers of darkness, and spiritual forces of evil. I believe that most, if not all the fighting, takes place upon the field of the human mind.

God created this world and He owns it. It is derived. We readily acknowledge that. As a creation, it is subject to physical laws. Our outward physical forms must, in general, conform to the rules of biology and physics. But we, the rightful lords and stewards of the cosmos, are spiritual beings first and foremost. Robin’s sidebar quote of St. Francis is applicable here – change worlds. The high ground is ours. What are the towering walls of a fortress when you’re flying at 30,000 feet? Relatively speaking, the walls of Jericho weren’t even a speed bump.

The flesh attacks from the ground in a frontal assault. It builds siege machinery and ramps, attempts to scale the walls, and laboriously, day after bloody day, prosecutes the same battle over and over. The walls never fall. The stronghold is never surrendered and the enemy is never taken captive. The unhappy paradox is that we strengthen the walls by fighting in this fashion.

Paul says add a dimension. Move the fight from the flatlands to the heavens, and throw in some shock and awe. The battle is the Lord's, and the victory is ours.

Don't You want to Go?

The Gospel train is coming,
Oh, don't you want to go,
And leave this world of sorrow
and trouble here below


”See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will never see Me again until you say, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”

As Jesus left and was going out of the temple complex, His disciples came up and called His attention to the temple buildings. Then He replied to them, “Don’t you see all these things? I assure you: Not one stone will be left here on another that will not be thrown down!”

While He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples approached Him privately and said, “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what is the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?” -- Matthew 23:38,39; 24:1-3

The last two verses of Matthew 23 are quoted above. They end Christ’s lament over Jerusalem. Then Matthew 24 begins. It is always good to keep in mind that the Bible is divided into chapter and verse simply for the purposes of convenient referencing. Matthew’s book had no divisions of any sort as he wrote it. Thus it is important to base one’s interpretations on the immediate context as well as the general ideas expressed.

Futurists – particularly pre-millennial, pre-tribulation futurists use Matthew 24 as part of their hermeneutical argument. Matthew 24:15-22 is quoted as proof of the coming “Great Tribulation”. I have no quarrel with futurists, or preterists for that matter – frankly I just don’t care. My eschatological view is summed up in Jesus’ command to “occupy until I come”. I got my job and I’m here for the duration.

I do have a quarrel about tribulation. If I begin reading in Matthew 23 and continue on through the 24th chapter, without any preconceived notions about what is being said, I get the distinct, clear impression that Jesus is talking about a future destruction of Jerusalem and of Herod’s temple. The Lord speaks like an Old Testament prophet in declaring that because Israel had refused to accept her Messiah, she must suffer. It is an echo of Isaiah and Jeremiah and especially of Ezekiel who saw a vision of the glory of the Lord departing from the temple prior to the Babylonians’ capture and devastation of the city and its temple.

When the passage speaks of Jesus’ return, it seems to be referring to His return in judgment to chastise the Jews for rejecting Christ. This would be fulfilled in 66-70 A.D. with the siege of Jerusalem by the forces of Rome under Titus. As recorded by Josephus in his history, this was indeed a time of “great tribulation”. It appears to fulfill much – if not all -- of Christ’s prophetic declaration in Matthew 24. Josephus even records an incident of one of the legions, with its pagan standard, entering the temple complex and then being forced to withdraw prior to the fall of the city itself that would equate to the “abomination of desolation”.

As I said, though, my gripe with futurists is about tribulation. Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation...” – John 16:33. The believer is in hostile territory. This was certainly true under tyrants like Nero and Domitian who aggressively persecuted Christians. It was true under Communist rule in the Soviet Union, and under Mao in China. It is true today in many Muslim countries where people are killed for converting to Christianity. Given all the suffering, death and destruction of the Holocaust, one would be hard-pressed not to say that in sheer numbers Hitler’s persecution of the Jews was a “great tribulation”. But Jesus was not talking about suffering in general He was speaking specifically of Jerusalem.

Now, I understand the principle of “double fulfillment” in Scripture, i.e., that a prophecy can have an immediate specific fulfillment as well as some greater future fulfillment, and futurists apply that idea here.

The trouble is that there seems to be this idea that the Christian life should be a picnic and that we will be snatched out of the world prior to anything really bad taking place. The fallacy of this should be evident to anyone not currently in a coma. But, the futurist counters, the Great Tribulation will be really, really bad. My answer: they can only hang you once. It’s been done. Christians were tortured and martyred in many places. For the person those are great tribulations. The futurist seems to think that suffering worldwide, collectively is a greater degree but that is not true.

I recently watched the film We Were Soldiers. This is a decidedly Christian story and somewhat of an allegory for the Christian life. We are in enemy territory – in the world but not of it – in a hot LZ. We’ve got the choppers coming in with what we need for the fight, but we have to do the fighting. The battle is the Lord’s but those are my boots on the ground. They could evacuate some but it would be at a loss and the battle would be lost. I could go, but who would watch my buddy’s back? Of course, one could argue that Jesus has an advantage over Too Tall and Old Snake when it comes to getting His people out in one swoop, but it is still surrendering the field to the enemy. No, we are here to win both the battle and the war. We go out only when the enemy flees into his hole, devastated and defeated.

We will have trouble. We will suffer. It is not necessarily because of some sin we have committed. It is not because of our negative confession or our lack of faith. We face trials because we are alive and human, and especially because we are seeking God. Testing perfects our faith. Suffering can move us toward God. We miss the whole point if we are looking for an easy way out. I am not looking for the Rapture. I am looking for victory. I don’t need evac; I need more ammo. Instead of my clothes falling empty to the sidewalk when I am “changed in the twinkling of an eye”, I want to “put off the old man and put on Christ” and be “transformed by the renewing of my mind.”

As I said, I’m not a partisan when it comes to eschatology so if the futurists are right, all well and good. If Jesus wants to come back today, I would be thrilled. That means we have won.

Meanwhile:

Talk about sufferin’
Here below
And let’s keep a’followin’
Jesus
Talk about sufferin’
Here below
And let’s keep a’lovin’
Jesus