Crash and Burn Edition

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance … Romans 5:3

I was watching an episode of some science fiction-type, post-apocalyptic television show, of which there seems to be a plethora these days.  One of the more villainous – but, of course, villainous “for the greater good” – characters challenged the main protagonist, accusing him of being  a “cowboy” who enjoyed living in the death throes of civilized society. 

Isn’t one of the reasons we like to ice skate is that we stand a better chance of falling?  Isn’t the true beauty of ice skating learning to be graceful in our defiance of gravity, balancing on a knife edge while moving over the slipperiest surface we can find?  The Lord does not call us to follow Him to safety and security in a bubble-wrap heaven.  He calls us to live dangerously, to follow Him boldly out onto the thin ice of obedience in the very face of suffering and death.    

Right now, like the fictional heroes we admire in westerns and adventure stories, we face the challenge of a post-Christian world.  A true Christian is in open rebellion against the world and its standards, its rules and its laws.  We are bound to be obedient to a higher law – the law of love, and love is and always has been dangerous.  Like ice skating, downhill skiing, skydiving, skateboarding, bicycle or motorcycle riding, bull-riding, rock climbing, etc., the whole game of the Christian life is to defy the Fall, to challenge the world’s gravity and defeat it using its own power against it. 

For once, the ESV fails us slightly.  A better word for “rejoice” in the verse above is “exult” or “glory”.  We do not merely overcome the corruption and suffering of a fallen world system.  The real trick is to gracefully glory in our defiance of the pull of sorrow, regret, and fear, to laugh in the face of death and despair. 

We should not kid ourselves.  The champion figure skater does not perform without paying the toll of many falls, bruises, pain, and frustration.  Grace grows by stumbles, struggles and tears.  As Bunyan’s Pilgrim learned, there is no shortcut that avoids the trials of life in this sphere.  We, too, will come to cross the Slough of Despond.  We will be hindered by snares.  We will face defeat.  Yet defeat is not permanent unless we refuse to get up and try again.  Each time we slip we get up stronger, making one more minute adjustment to our balance.  Each failure is one failure closer to perfection, i.e., maturity.

And, if the ice is getting thin, remember that Jesus walked on the water, and Peter walked with Him. 

 

Future Veterans

But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction ... -- 2 Peter 2:12

We have come to Veterans' Day when we recall and revere those who gave pieces of their lives to, so they hoped, save their nations and advance civilization and liberty.  It is becoming fashionable, I fear, to dismiss these courageous and worthy souls as puppets of government schemes and corruption.  Governments are corrupt, and there is no end to schemers. 

That is a little like what Peter says here.  Even in the Body of Christ, rising up like blemishes on the face of the Bride, there will always be those who cannot give up their corruption.  The material world and this fleeting life is all they believe in, all they hope for, and all to which they care to cling.  Such people make a travesty of religious faith.  They deceive and dissemble, connive and conceal.  They mock the truth and righteousness by every word they speak and every vile plot they hatch in the dark corners of their hearts.

There's a part of me that reacts to this and says, This should not be.  We ought to be able to rid ourselves of such "irrational animals", these destroyers and deceivers.  That ought to be the case in the Church, certainly, but also in the world.  We have a bias in the modern age toward thinking that tomorrow will be a little better and a little brighter than today, and next year there will be newer and better things and a better world than we had last year.  We are past the false teachers of Christianity and the despots of the world.  There will be no more mud and blood and Great Wars, no more global conflagrations.  Slowly but surely we are ridding the world of violence, corruption, and evil.  We just have to press on.

It's a nice thought, but it is wrong. There are going to be wars, depressions, famines, earthquakes, and pestilence.  Our nation will go the way of all nations.  There will be death and destruction such as never seen before in history because there are more people and more advanced technology and more powerful and deadly weapons than ever before.  It could start tomorrow; or, it may be forty years or more.  I made be in the middle of it, or I may die before it really gets going.  The reason I know this will happen is simply that there are so many blind, unreasoning, brutish people in the world and far too many of them are in positions of power and influence.  They will do irrational, stupid things.  They will destroy much and will themselves be destroyed by their own corrupt practices and beliefs. 

Those whom we celebrate on Veterans' Day stood up against the brutes and beat them back for a time.  But such creatures are never eradicated.  They came back to be dealt with once more. 

We should pray that both in the Church and in the world, we may be able to stand strong when it is our time to face the adversaries.

Standing Up

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. -- Hebrews 12:3

I cannot say that, as a Christian, I have encountered a lot of direct, personal hostility.  I have lived all my life in a majority-Christian nation, associating mostly with people who were, at the very least, cultural Christians.  There does seem to be a sort of sea-change right now, and growing animus aimed at the heart of the Church.  If this anti-Christ movement gains momentum, we should not become discouraged.

I think I would have a hard time welcoming serious persecution, yet, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”   

I don’t know if I can do that. 

Should it become, in what remains of my earthly journey, a crime to follow Christ, to speak His Name, to speak the truth in love, or to live in obedience to the Bible and the dictates of my conscience, the best I could hope is to follow the admonition from Hebrews.  If I cannot rejoice in hostility and oppression, perhaps I can endure without fainting and giving up. 

Christ was victorious.  He will always be victorious.  Those who might hope to eradicate Christianity or, worse, neutralize and pervert it, will find their efforts backfiring on them badly.  They might demolish the churches but the Church will stand stronger and taller than ever.  They might set fire to a building, but we are baptized in fire and the Holy Spirit.  It is our native element. 

Stickers

You are those who have stayed with me in my trials … -- Luke 22:28

Jesus commended His disciples who had made His trials, up to that point, their trials.  The Lord has made all of our trials His trials. 

We have a choice, and it is not whether or not we will experience suffering and temptation, fears and uncertainty in life.  We can choose our trials or His trials.  We can choose to go through life’s pain becoming embittered by its meaninglessness, randomness, and purposelessness. 

The other option is to go with God.  He will lead us into times, not of temptation, but of tempering.  The blade of the sword passes through fire, goes between hammer and anvil, is quenched in oil or water.  It is not destroyed but perfected.  It becomes sharp but not brittle, flexible yet unyielding. 

God created the cosmos, and He sustains it.  He can move heaven and earth, but He loves us and leaves us free to love Him.  Or to reject Him.  The will is ours.  Will we stay with Him through His trials?  Or will we pick up our sack of suffering, and, doubled over by the load, stumble off on our own? 

When I stand before the Lord, I think it would be good to hear Him say, “You stayed with Me.”  Sometimes it is hard.  We go through things that make us question our faith and doubt our worth and God’s goodness.  Yet these are His trials, and, as we go through them with Him, He also goes through them with us.  I will never leave you nor forsake you.

Some Reviving

For we are slaves. Yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia, to grant us some reviving to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us protection in Judea and Jerusalem.  -- Ezra 9:9

We were slaves to sin, to the old nature, to the powers and principalities of this world and its darkness.  The deliverance of the Jews from their captivity and exile and their restoration to Jerusalem foreshadows our deliverance through Christ who, as Philippians 2:7 says, effectively made Himself a slave like us.  He experienced the rejection of death and exile in hell.  Then He arose triumphant -- just as He had said, at the end of three days, “reviving” and rebuilding the true Temple of God – His own body. 

The world is troubled in many ways today.  There is fear and violence and uncertainty.  Financial crises loom.  Terror and persecution stalk the lives of innocent people in countries all over the planet.  Fools cry, “Peace, peace”, but there is no peace for those ruled and controlled by spiritual wickedness. The problems faced by humanity cannot be solved by military interventions, global initiatives, bail-outs, bail-ins, or changing flags. 

When it comes to eschatology, as I have said before, there is a lot I don’t know, but I do know the Lord gives wisdom to those who will ask of Him.  For those Christians who have not asked already, I would suggest that now would be a really good time to ask in earnest.  I’m not saying that the Lord has spoken to me about anything, but I have a feeling we are going to go through some changes and difficulties such that most of us in the West have not seen or experienced. 

It will, I think, be a kind of exile.  Keep Peter’s warning in mind:  For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:17)  People are hollering about America being judged for court decisions and such.  The Lord might decide to straighten out His people before He starts on the world.  We should not be discouraged if that should be the case for it means we are closer to revival, renewal, and restoration than ever before.

Down and Out in Egypt

Egypt was glad when they departed, for dread of them had fallen upon it. -- Psalms 105:38

I admit that I am a rather perverse Christian.  I always smile when I read this verse.  It has often been the case in my life that people have been glad to be rid of me, probably not so much for dread as for annoyance.  The basis of the psalmist’s chant is Exodus 12:33, The Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste. For they said, We shall all be dead.  Plague after plague and destruction wrought by God had left the Egyptians fatigued, terrorized, beaten and baffled. 

The world has been, here in the West, remarkably tolerant of the Church in some of its manifestations.   There is, these days, though, a rising and more blatant animosity being expressed, not only by the militant atheists but society in general.  I am not worried by this. 

As individual believers, the times of stress and turmoil that we face can be the times when we experience the most rapid and genuine growth and fruitfulness. So, it can be, too, with the Church as a whole.  Persecution brings purification, and, sometimes the Body of Christ is in need of that, though we certainly don’t enjoy or welcome it.

There isn’t much that I would call “official” persecution going on here in the United States apart from the incursions of the fabulous gay –marriage gestapo against bakers and photographers.  The growing cultural opposition and antagonism to any public expressions of Christian faith, values, and piety, however, indicate that a watershed may be approaching.  More and more people find the idea of free speech on the part of anyone outside the Borg offensive.  Not content with ignoring and deriding us, they might prefer to have us silenced.

I am old enough to have attended school when the teacher led us in prayer, when Bibles were commonly found and even read from in the classroom, and we stood together to say the Pledge of Allegiance.  I doubt that any of those things were harmful to any child.  Being a child, when these activities ceased, I did not give much thought to it.  I am such an opponent of public schools and the dastardly teachers’ unions that I would oppose sending children to those indoctrination centers even if they allowed prayers.  In fact, it may not be too long before they do sanction prayer – five times a day, facing Mecca.

When the Israelites left Egypt, the biblical account states that they spoiled the Egyptians, taking much in the way of jewelry, gold and silver from their former masters.  The Lord was able to move the hearts of the Egyptians and make those arrangements because it all belongs to Him.  I believe that He will, amid the coming turbulence, give gifts to the Church, perhaps material riches, but certainly wisdom, insight, understanding, skills and talents that are necessary for the furtherance of the kingdom.  This will be the case all around the world, even in the heart of Muslim nations and oppressive socialist regimes.    

The pendulum swings; the wheel turns.  Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.