Smiling Grimly

[B]ut as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way:  … by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; … as dying, and behold, we live; … as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.  – 2 Corinthians 6:4-10

Perhaps nowhere is it written so explicitly as here:  the true creed of the Christian.  This is not for ministers and missionaries alone.  All believers ought to live so as to deny their accusers any ground on which to stand.  If we are persecuted, we ought to be sure we are persecuted for the sake of truth, purity, humility, meekness, and obedience to the Word of God. 

Sooner or later, when tested, what is in our hearts will be manifested in our lives.  A heart full of bitterness and resentment and ingratitude will, despite our best efforts at suppression, eventually boil over in and be voiced.  On the other hand, no matter how hard the outer shell, under pressure, Christ will be exposed in the Christian. 

At the moment when it seems that all is lost and that we are bound to die, we are surprised by the life of Christ released and breaking forth.  In the darkest depths of suffering and anguish, we come to the end of ourselves and find inexplicable joy.  We may never be happy again in this life, but we will rejoice always in Christ.  We turn loose of everything in this world to find that we have not only lost nothing but gained everything.  It is the contradiction and near absurdity of our faith, the wry, smiling, all-knowing foolishness of God.

I have said, in moments of great pain, that surely life must be a joke.  There is some truth to that, but it is not the sick joke of the nihilist.  It is a grand and glorious joke, and we are in on it.  It is not a joke to those in hell, but that is because they took the wrong things too seriously.  Our love for the lost must make us sorrowful for their sakes, yet we cannot help being overwhelmed by exultation of the deliverance all may know.  We rightly grieve when a beloved face is taken from us, but we rejoice knowing we will see them again where there is no parting. 

When age or infirmity or circumstances leave us weakened and hemmed in, we may look back on youth and health and past opportunities with longing and a little regret, yet we know this is the path that takes us to the place of eternal youth, beauty, and liberty.  Our understanding brings a little of that beauty into the present to put a shine on a wrinkled face and make us glory in our weaknesses.   

Ours is a life of paradox.  There’s no way around it.  Sin grieves us – in ourselves and in others, not because we hate them but because we love them, and we know too well the destruction that awaits those who walk that road.  Do I look like a fool screaming at someone to get out of his house?  Perhaps.  But it is afire.  Love motivates me.  I weep that all do not know the joy of the Lord.

Burn, Baby, Burn

The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil.  Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.  -- Proverbs 8:13

We are born with the capacity to hate.  Contrary to what the utopians believe, people are not taught to hate, only what to hate.  Nor do most of us have to learn to sin.  It comes naturally.  Without discipline children are likely to remain self-centered and concerned only with having their own needs met by any means possible.  Good parents are those who reflect the Divine Nature as the Moon reflects the Sun.  They teach their children to be respectful of them and of the boundaries they set based on their greater wisdom and experience.  The typical television show or “family” movie these days is quite likely to attack that perspective and depict children as being born wiser, more intelligent, talented and “true to themselves” than their parents.  If you doubt that media and entertainment have an impact on worldviews, take a walk around a retail store or mall sometime and see all the little dictators running their parents like slaves.

Whether hatred is sin depends upon its object.  Sometimes hatred is merely a matter of misunderstanding or the culmination of bad experiences – as the lady I knew who had to go to therapy because she hated Hindus.  She was an apartment manager and rented places to a lot of Indians on H1Bs.  They weren’t all accustomed to Western ways and were slow to adjust to the culture and environment.  This caused her great stress to the point that she nearly became physically violent toward some of them.   

Hatred of evil, however, is allowed to burn white hot within us because our God who is a consuming fire hates evil as well.  There is no need to hate the person who does evil.  I would have to start by hating myself.  Rather I am to hate the wickedness that I do or that I might do, that would lead me to deny or attempt to deceive God.  We can read in Romans 7:15, I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  God warned Cain from the very beginning that … sin is crouching at the door.  Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.

I wrote sometime back about how perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).  What the righteous fear is not God Himself but the violation of His edicts and laws.  We are to have a respect for the infinite wisdom and understanding of the Lord as wise children.  Because we are tempted and sometimes seduced by evil to cross these lines, we hate it.  Evil, like a creeping serpent, like a predator lying in wait, is always right there with us, even in our best moments.  Why would we not despise and hold in utter contempt such a deceptive and destructive thing?  It is a principle of this material existence more relentless than gravity and only our ultimate salvation and glorification in Christ will us free of it.  Meanwhile, we must beware, for … I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.