Tactical Suffering

And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. -- Mark 8:32

The fuller exchange between Peter and the Lord is found in Matthew 16, but Mark gives us the idea.  Recently, after yet more senseless murders, a newspaper headline declared that God would not fix our problems.  Others mocked and ridiculed those who offered prayers for the victims and their families after the attack.  Man always thinks he can tell God how to do things.  Blind, ignorant, and corrupt politicians know better how to run the world than the God who created it.  Many, if not most, anti-God arguments start from the assumption that what a particular person or culture considers good also constrains God. 

Napoleon was a master of maneuver warfare because he could almost instinctively grasp the strategic points of the ground on which the battle would be fought.  The soldiers sent forward to capture a particular position might not have understood the significance of what they did or failed to do.  All they knew was the blood and horror of the battle around them.  They braved the enemy’s fire or they failed to advance.  The individual knew only the risks of his own situation.  He could not see, especially during the battle, the part it played in the grand strategy of his general.  His line might be the feint, or it might be the main attack.  He might be the pawn sacrificed to draw the enemy away or he might the hammer which crushed the opposing force.     

I don’t think we have all that much understanding of how the world really works.  I think we are arrogant in our ignorance.  We have developed some cool technology and some interesting toys over the last hundred years or so, but we are fools if we think we can control the forces of nature or that we comprehend the mysteries of the universe or of our own existence.  Shakespeare is a lot closer to the truth than the science popularizers, the academics, Keynesian economists, and such:  There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.

It doesn’t mean we should not strive or learn or that we can’t ever know some things.  It means that we ought to humbly acknowledge with Browning, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”  The modern and the post-modern have eliminated heaven, and we know the agonies and destruction wrought to bring about their childish utopias of nihilistic hopelessness. 

No one in this world is ever going to eliminate suffering and evil or so much as explain why they have to exist.   Atheists can’t explain it any more than Buddhists, Muslims, or Christians.  The day after some horrific event, disaster, or excruciating personal loss, we all, regardless of philosophical view or religious faith, have to get up and make it until the end.  The difference is not in what I know but who I know.  God knows, and I trust Him. 

Maybe They Had Bagpipes

O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.  -- 2 Chronicles 20:12

The story of Jehoshaphat being told here is a well-known and celebrated one, preached over and over like the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego or David and Goliath.  Judah was threatened by an invading army of overwhelming numbers.  The king proclaims a fast and prays.  God answers by telling the people of Judah to send singers and musicians out in front of their forces to praise and glorify the Lord.  The enemy is thrown into confusion, and the allies begin to fight among themselves until they are wiped out.  When Jehoshaphat and his people arrive on the scene, all they have to do is pick up the spoils.

 The message is usually that looking toward God, praising Him, and relying upon Him will enable us to overcome otherwise insurmountable obstacles and be greatly blessed.  It’s a good message, and it’s true, but the key to the whole thing, it seems to me, lies in the couple of sentences above which are part of Jehoshaphat’s prayer. 

We do not know what to do … When we are faced with a terrifying, mind-numbing situation, stricken by loss, suffering, in pain, confused and frightened, that is the first thing we need to realize.  None of the options I can come up with are particularly appealing or offer any hope of success.  This set of circumstances, the demands and threats I face are beyond my experience, knowledge and understanding.  What I am supposed to do?

… but our eyes are on you – I don’t have a solution.  I don’t have a pat answer.  The only thing I know to do is to look to You, Lord, to keep my eyes on You, to be ready to take whatever direction You offer. 

In this case, God gave them a specific and somewhat odd instruction.  The “praise team” at church likes to think that the solution is always just to sing “In the Presence of Jehovah” or whatever “powerful” chorus is currently popular.  I would remind them that in another dire situation, also involving Jehoshaphat and a musician, God told them to keep quiet and dig ditches (2 Kings 3).  The point is not to assume that you know what the Lord wants done but to seek Him for what He wants and how He wants to do it this time. 

Sometimes Jesus healed people by speaking a word, sometimes by a touch, one time He spit on a mute’s tongue, another time He spit on some clay and put the mud on a blind man’s eyes.  David was told to use different strategies on different occasions in battling the Philistines.  Samson didn’t carry that jawbone with him everywhere he went. 

That’s not to say that a person can ever go wrong praising the Lord and giving Him glory.  Rather as we serve the Lord and follow Him and are led by the Spirit, we sometimes need to say, "I don’t know what to do, but my eyes are on You," and be ready to trust and obey.

I’m In the Pen But I’m Not A Pig

You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. – James 4:4

By the way, the reason James uses the feminine version of adulterer is that he is speaking to those of us who should constitute the Bride of Christ.

What do we mean by the world? The Bullet Notes in the back of my Holman Christian Standard Bible give about as good a definition as I can find. The world is [t]he organized Satanic system that is opposed to God and hostile to Jesus and His followers. The non-Christian culture including governments, educational systems, and businesses. I’d say that pretty well covers it, although I might add that much we call “church” or religious can be classified as of the world. And, though it is included under government, I would specifically list the legal system as being of the world. Separation of church and state didn’t originate with Jefferson’s letter – more like James’ Letter.

As a Christian, I don’t owe the world anything. I do pay my taxes and pay my own way primarily so the world will leave me alone. I am, by necessity, in the world, but there is no need to be of the world. There is no salvation in the world, in its ideas, plans or institutions. Proverbs says there is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends only in death. That’s the way of the world, the observable way, rather than the hidden way of the Tao. So, too, the Lord says the Kingdom of God does not come by observation – the Way, the Kingdom – same thing.

I know even as I am trying to put this into words that I am going to sound like some sort of desert hermit, anti-government survivalist flake, whacked-out malcontent, or somebody sitting on a rooftop in a bed sheet waiting for the Rapture. Well, whatever. What I know is that the world system works against godliness and for materialism. It favors carnality over spirituality and form over substance. It rewards clever conniving and rejects truth. The only way for a righteous person to win within the system is to become a part of it, to get down purely on the horizontal and see things as the worldling sees them.

The world will read a statement like the one above and laugh at it. Of course, the system will work against the “spiritual” and for the pragmatic. The non-conforming person should have no expectation of success in the real world. You can believe what you like, the world says, but you have to play by our rules.

No.

I’m tired of trying to appease the world, of trying to get along, of playing a rigged game. The righteous will, by their very nature, have to operate at a disadvantage. I am called to be pure in heart, a peacemaker, one who turns the other cheek, goes the extra mile – one who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. I am called to seek first the Kingdom, not fame, acclaim, or someone to blame. I do not believe that ultimately I have to be of the world to be in it. Either God is in control or no one is. Either Jesus is Truth, or there is no truth.

Every institution and process that is of the world is simply an attempt to usurp the place of Christ, to build a tower of Babel, to achieve by human effort what is mine by faith. To the extent that I believe in the system, I do not believe in Christ.

It sounds radically radical. It sounds scandalous to my own ears. Surely I don’t really believe what I am saying. I do believe it. I may struggle to live it, to synchronize my confession with my conversation, but I believe it. Too many times, God has slapped me with the reality of the system’s antagonism. I have been depressed enough to die over the fact that, although I knew I was in the right, the system turned against me. Why? I cried to the Lord. And He said, because it’s not My system, not My Kingdom, not My Way. When I abandoned the world and stepped back into the Way, miraculously, one might say, the problem was resolved. Peace came into my life, and I walked again in light.

Weeping endures for the night – for the world is in darkness, even unto this hour. But joy comes in the morning.