False Hope

The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue.  -- Psalms 33:17

I always think there ought to be a fix.  There ought to be something a person could do, could have done, should have had, whatever, to avoid a bad outcome.  I’m not alone in this.  Doc Ok, or, is it Oz?, has all kinds of foods you can eat or not eat to avoid getting fat or getting old or getting ugly.  Some of it may even work.  I can tell you from experience, though, that the only way to avoid getting old is to die young and leave a good-looking corpse.  I think sixteen was my last chance for that, so I’m still here. 

I’m a person who believes in planning ahead.  The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it (Proverbs 22:3).  The Lord has not given us a spirit of fear, but He has given us the spirit of power, love, and self-control, or good judgment (2 Timothy 1:7).  If a person isn’t going to use his head, there’s no sense in him keeping it. 

But the psalmist is right, and not just because he agrees with Bobby Burns, that foresight may prove vain and even our best plans and preparations cannot guarantee success.  Things do go agley.  If we can’t depend on our own insight, understanding, and strength, and all of our technological advancements may prove inadequate, what are we to do? 

I don’t think the answer is to give up, fold our hands and make no effort to prepare.  For example, I love firearms, but I’m a fool if I think that they are going to save me.  A person is better off with a big stick and the Lord than a .50 BMG by itself.  Of course, there’s nothing that says you can’t have the Lord and a Big Mama.  When we lay the best plans we can, we give the Lord something He work with.  

 We ought to know, however, that “… the eye of the Lord is on those … who hope in his steadfast love.”  We trust only in the Lord.  He is the one who will preserve and protect us as we look to Him.

False hopes abound in the world, from politics to pills to plastic surgery.  A million false hopes and their inevitable failures cannot deny or degrade the One True Hope who cannot fail.

None Good

As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call Me good?” Jesus asked him. “No one is good but One – God.”
-- Mark 10:17,18

Rather than eat up Bob’s space with an extended rehash of the obvious and leave myself looking egocentric, I decided to post it here.

I hope Petey doesn’t mind me stealing one of his favorite lines, but this is a One Cosmos one-off, you might say. One of the OC posters, Warren, commented on the “problem of evil” that seems to trouble so many who proclaim themselves to be atheist or agnostic. He said that the existence of evil and suffering in the world moved him toward God rather than away from Him.

Another poster, Erasmus, pulled a quote from Ray Ingles mini-Mein Kampf where Ray dismissed a God that would allow a volcano to erupt and burn up children in an orphanage. He says that God is to blame for all suffering (that is, He would be if He existed). Finally, the inimitable Slim Pickens noted that if he were to blame God for something it would be for creating Ray. Slim’s point is well taken in that, to paraphrase, Charleton Heston, “Evil is people!”

The atheist cannot deal with the righteousness of God or, consequently, the righteous requirements of God. Ray’s statement was indicative, saying, in essence, that it was not fair to rain on both the just and the unjust. Ray, of course, misses the actual point that rain would be a blessing rather than a curse, but we know what he means. God should bless good people and wipe out bad people.

The first and most obvious problem is the one reflected in the Lord’s koan-like response to the rich young ruler quoted above. God alone is good. All humanity is sinful and imperfect. Even the best of us do or have done wicked things. God does not have “bad aim” as Ray facetiously suggests. God is merciful to those of us who do wrong.

As far as disasters, diseases, “tragic” accidents, etc., those are the consequences of living in a fallen world. “In this world,” Jesus assured us, “you will have trouble.” But He goes on to reassure us, “Cheer up, though. I have overcome the world.” The present world, intended to be perfected under man’s dominion, was corrupted by the Fall. It is redeemed by the Last Adam’s obedience, though the full manifestation of that redemption is not yet seen.

Another problem is one cannot comprehend God’s reality if one assumes that when you are dead you are dead. This world is not enough. Certainly if this life is all there is, some relatively innocent people get the short end, while O.J. got by with murder for quite a while. If there is a God (and there is), then this life is not all, not by a long shot. If there is a God, He will even it up, so to speak. Consider a parable Jesus told in Luke 16:19-31 about a rich man and a poor beggar. They both died. The beggar went to paradise and the rich man went to hell, where he, not too surprisingly, began to complain about his accommodations. Abraham chided the man in hell, “Son, remember that during your life you received good things, just as Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted, while you are in agony.”

Atheists seem unable to comprehend their own sinfulness. Some make excuses for their bad actions. Other claim they are not bad at all – especially if they don’t hurt anyone else. It is this view of evil as something external to themselves that causes the “problem of evil” to drive them away from religion. On the other hand, those of us who recognize our sinfulness are, as Warren suggested, drawn closer to God in the face of suffering.

You might say, quite biblically, that there is suffering and evil in the world because there are people in the world. Sometimes we reap the consequences of our own evil, sometimes that of others. The atheist asserts that a perfect God would not make an imperfect world. Yet how does the atheist know the world is imperfect? How does he or she know what a perfect God would do? Clearly the atheist is adequate with his finite, inorganically-grown mindless brain to comprehend and judge an infinite Spiritual Being.

Me, I don’t think so much of myself, maybe because I have looked in the mirror, looked in the Mirror, and looked in my heart. I am willing to trust in and rely on the wisdom of God when I see evil, pain, and injustice.

Wisdom's Vindication

A would-be disciple came to Nasrudin's hut on the mountain-side.

Knowing that every action of such an enlightened one is significant, the seeker watched the teacher closely. "Why do you blow on your hands?"

"To warm myself in the cold."

Later, Nasrudin poured bowls of hot soup for himself and the newcomer, and blew on his own. "Why are you doing that, Master?"

"To cool the soup."

Unable to trust a man who uses the same process to arrive at two different results -- hot and cold -- the disciple departed.

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For John did not come eating or drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.


Spiritual truth cannot be received by natural minds. The natural man may see the same things and hear the same things as the spiritually alive, but he does not understand its significance. Logic and reason are useless. The blind cannot be argued into sight. The dead cannot be reasoned to life.

It is not surprising, then, that the flatlander finds fault with the ways and words of those who live in other dimensions. Seeing only in the horizontal he cannot comprehend the motivations or the true being of those inhabiting the vertical. It is rather like my cat watching the neighbor drive by with a stock trailer full of cattle. She recognizes the phenomenon. She’s tracking movement, calculating distance and size, but there’s just a whole lot going on that she can never understand.

It’s not that I have a persecution complex as a Christian, but non-believers tend to judge Christians pretty harshly. I have often thought that George W. Bush’s troubles began when he said that Christ had the greatest influence on him because He had changed his life. The left-wing, mostly godless faction in this country pounced on the statement as indicating that Bush was stupid. Atheists assume that they are smarter than theists. That someone would profess a real Christianity is indicative of moronically low intelligence. Never mind that Bush attended Yale and has an MBA, or that he was fighter pilot, the requirements for which probably include an above average intelligence. He is a Christian so any stick may be used to beat him.

“Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

The older versions read more like:

“Yet wisdom is vindicated by her children.”

Jesus was challenging more than one group when He spoke. He was speaking to the godless, of which there were many in His day, to the activists who believed government was the answer, and to the religious who trusted in the institution of religion. Those who don’t believe in anything they can’t see have always been around. Today they would attribute the miracles of Christ to the power of suggestion. They might try to relate His love, compassion, and self-sacrifice to a mutated gene. I’m not sure how they dealt with it back then but they were just as skeptical and just as cynical. There were zealots even among the Disciples who wanted the Kingdom established through the restoration of Israel. They wanted a son of David to sit on a throne in Jerusalem and they looked to Jesus for that. They hated the Romans and wanted the gentile dogs expelled from their country. Then there were the traditionally religious who loved to look down their noses at sinners thinking they served God while hating their neighbors.

He called the skeptical to consider the changed lives that followed in His wake – the broken are made whole, the blind see, and the dead live. He called the subversives to consider the true nature of the Kingdom – it does not come with observation but it is within you. He called the superstitious to look beyond their dogmas – to see that God dwells not in buildings, that His ultimate temple is the human heart.

So, they crucified Him.

As He hung on the cross, they mocked Him. “If you are the Son of God, then come down from the cross now.”

He died in agony.

“Yet wisdom is vindicated by her children.”