God and Government

So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth.  For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted. -- Habakkuk 1:4

Verse 4. The law is slacked: They pay no attention to it; it has lost all its vigour, its restraining and correcting power, it is not executed; right judgment is never pronounced; and the poor righteous man complains in vain that he is grievously oppressed by the wicked, and by those in power and authority. That the utmost depravity prevailed in the land of Judah is evident from these verses; and can we wonder, then, that God poured out such signal judgments upon them? When judgment doth not proceed from the seat of judgment upon earth, it will infallibly go forth from the throne of judgment in heaven. – Adam Clarke, Commentary, on Habakkuk 1:4

Please direct your attention to that last sentence in the quote from Clarke.  Most of us as Christians are familiar with Paul admonition in Romans 13:1 to be obedient to civil government:   Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.  I can believe, readily enough, that God, in His wisdom, has a hand in establishing governments.  We can see that some government is appropriate and useful and necessary. 

As a Christian, I favor justice, respect for the lives and property of others, and good moral behavior.  I seem to recall a time when people behaved themselves because it was the right thing to do, when what we could call “community standards” were recognized and generally accepted.  I am concerned about the militarization of local police forces and the increasingly militarized bureaucracies of the federal government.  But when community standards and common decency are pushed aside, when the basic morality reflected in the Ten Commandments is dismissed, it’s not too surprising that stronger and more tyrannical governments arise as a consequence.

In other words, if we want Andy Taylor for our sheriff, we need to live like the citizens of Mayberry.  I believe that God will give us the kind of government we deserve.  America is far less a Christian nation than it was a hundred years ago.  We can blame that on Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, but the fault lies in us -- perhaps not you and I personally, but the citizenry as a whole.  As Peter told us long ago, [I]t 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). 

The purpose of the Church is not to rubberstamp the decisions of secular authority.  We are not to accommodate and tolerate whatever the government decides to approve and endorse.  We can have license without righteousness, but we cannot have liberty.  If we want to live in a free country, we have to be moral people – not by government mandate but by the mandate of heaven. 

Perhaps there is a corollary to Clarke’s observation.  If, when judgment fails to come from the civil magistrates, judgment falls from the throne of God, is it possible that we could restore righteousness to secular authority by living according to the divine standard?  Then he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there. He answered, For the sake of ten I will not destroy it (Genesis 18:32).  The Cities of the Plain would not have been overthrown if there had been within their walls but ten decent, troubled souls, ten who wept and mourned for the sins of Sodom.    

Thirst

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.  -- Matthew 5:6

Whether we are conscious of it or not, whether we realize it or not, the one thing that the human soul seeks is righteousness.  If we pursue it consciously and intentionally, we are blessed:  But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:33). 

On the other hand, not being conscious of our essential need for righteousness leads us, often, to seek other sources of satisfaction to our detriment.  I get thirsty sometimes and don’t realize it.  Being dehydrated makes me extremely anxious and irritable to the point that I will go berserk.  I’ll start raving and cussing and throwing things over nothing.  After years of experiencing this, I have learned that if I start feeling overwhelmed and irrationally disturbed, I need water.  It’s the strangest thing to one moment be agitated and crazy, chug a quart or two of water, and instantly be calm.  You’d think water was a tranquilizing drug.  Water is an essential, basic need that my body craves.  When my distracted mind ignores the need for whatever reason, the body starts sending signals that I may easily misinterpret. 

Righteousness is like water to the soul.  As the body is seventy percent water, so righteousness is the essence of the soul.  So what is righteousness?  The Hebrew tzedak/tsaddiyq  or its Greek equivalent dikaios/dikaioo appears hundreds of times in the Bible.  At root, the word means to be just or equitable, clean and innocent of any wrongdoing.  We sometimes say that it means right-standing with God, that we do that and only that which is pleasing to Him.   The righteous one is morally correct, justifiable, and upright.  If you are righteous, you can look God in the eye. 

It’s not just us dependent on righteousness.  As we were talking about yesterday, man was created as the lord of the rest of creation.  One of the reasons some Christians reject the idea of a universe 13 or 14 billion years old and carnivores of various kinds roaming the earth for millions of years before man appears is that they say there was no sin in the world until Adam’s fall, and without sin, there would be no death.  You can address this by pointing out that members of the angelic order whose existence precedes, we assume, the creation of the material universe, had already rebelled and fallen.  A second way to understand it, though, is to see how God does not impute sin apart from understanding.  As He allowed life on Earth to develop, only when His hierarchical agent, man, entered the picture would God’s law have begun to apply, e.g.,  … Apart from the law, sin lies dead (Romans 7:8b).  Adam’s job was to bring order, equity, justice, and mercy – i.e., righteousness, to life on Earth.  That’s still our job when we are ready for it: 

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.  For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now (Romans 8:19-22).

We are to seek God’s righteousness, not only because this is the very thing our souls crave, but because it is the very thing all of creation craves, and it has to come through us.  Adam’s fall brought death to man even as it shattered, for a time, the hope of the entire natural world.  Through Christ Jesus, we are delivered from the bondage of death and the rest of creation once again may hope to be delivered from its bondage to corruption. 

It’s a beautiful thing when you think about it.

Meanwhile, man makes the mistake of pursuing his own righteousness. We are so desperate to be in right-standing that we set up our own standards of righteousness, rejecting God’s.   I’m not going to put the link in, but I’m sure you can do a search (use ixquick not google) for vegan cat food [ok, here it is].  There are people who believe that their cats want to be cruelty-free.  In a way, looking at our verses above from Romans 8, there’s some truth to that view.  But if you try to impose it from outside, there’s a good chance your cats will be plotting at night to kill and eat you.  Name your kitty Cassius for he has that lean and hungry look.  If you want to save the world, you had better get your own bad self saved first.

I think if we could dig down under all the troubles and suffering and ugliness in our world, we would find this craving for integrity, justice, and righteousness driving us to do crazy things and destroy ourselves.  The first defense mechanism was a fig leaf.  It didn’t work.  God had to clothe the naked, exposed souls of our First Parents in the skins of slain beasts, shedding blood to shield us from our pain. 

Today our defenses are more sophisticated but no more effective.  We try and try and try again to establish our own righteousness.  Self-righteousness and self-justification fail to satisfy the thirsty soul, and we can’t seem to understand why.  

I used to run every night when I lived in Texas.  In the summer, even after sunset in the Dallas suburbs, you sweat, a lot.  One Sunday afternoon, I was playing softball with my church youth group and belted a line drive deep into the outfield.  As I sprinted around second base, my right calf locked up tight.  I was still limping a couple of days later at work.  As I hobbled along, an athletic co-worker asked me what was wrong.  I told him.  He asked me if my urine was dark.  I laughed and said I hadn’t been paying attention.  He told me I needed to drink water.  He had a Dr. Pepper in his hand, “This stuff or all the coffee you drink won’t fix it.” 

We cannot fix creation until we are fixed, and we cannot be fixed without the righteousness of God.  In the end, whether we sew together vegan fig leaves or the bloody skins of beasts, whether our standards are ephemerally post-modern or staunchly traditional, they will not quench the thirst of the soul.  Only the righteousness of Christ meets the absolute standard.  Only Jesus can look the Father straight in the face.  Only when we put on Christ are we perfectly justified and our innocence restored.   

The Whole

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.  Faithfulness springs up from the ground, and righteousness looks down from the sky.  -- Psalms 85:10-11

 There is always a wholeness to what God does.  It is something we crave.  I have had the experience of being fragmented, of my life having parts that make no sense and do not fit in with the rest of me.  We sometimes have relationships that seem at odds with who we are and where we are going or want to go.  Brokenness can be painful.  We may try on our own to put ourselves back together.  We find something to use for glue, maybe get some directions from another shattered person and attempt to figure out where everything ought to go.  We sometimes end up more than a little dysfunctional as a result. 

 The Lord offers us the wholeness we seek in Christ.  Our brokenness can become a blessing as God takes these useless, hurtful fragments and integrates them through the Cross.  The water and the blood make us pliable again and allow Him to reshape our lives with a new and eternal purpose. 

We become new creations in Christ.  Now we are made right, that is, we are righteous.  Righteousness brings peace.  Peace helps us to maintain our integrity.  We know we are missing something or in danger of again being shattered when we lose that peace. 

The psalmist says that faithfulness springs up from the ground.  God is always faithful on His side, but we can be true as well.  The imagery of a crop coming up from the dust of the earth reflects that faithfulness arising from within us.  It grows from the seed of love the Lord has planted in our hearts. 

Like any plant, our faithfulness will orient toward the light.  Righteousness shines down upon us, and we align ourselves with it.

This is how God means for us to live in relationship with Him.  It is a glimpse of the Kingdom Way, calling us to trust and rest and devotion. 

Scarcely Saved

Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.  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?  And “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”  Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good. – 1 Peter 4:16-19

Massive and unwelcome change seems to trouble the minds of many in these days.  Some are experiencing economic setbacks for the first time in their lives.  Some look to the future with dread.  Meanwhile, for years, Christianity has shied away, or, as we say down home, boogered at the prospect of preaching harshly and condemning transgressions and iniquity.  The preferred messages are about how to have a happy marriage and how to be financially blessed by God.  We may hear a lot about how much God loves us, which is true.  He loves us so much that He put His judgment upon His own Son, making Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. 

While that does demonstrate His love and grace in the most compelling way imaginable, it also reveals the condemnation that lies upon human nature.  Let us not be deceived nor deceive ourselves:  the whole world lies under sentence of death. 

Sometimes innocent people suffer and even die in unjust, unfair ways.  Little children are gunned down by madmen.  Helpless babies are aborted in their mothers’ wombs.  People going about their business are attacked and killed or maimed by animalistic thugs.  Terrorists blow themselves up to bring death to their enemies in the name of their god.  Tornadoes sweep through schools.  Hurricanes drown, flood and destroy. 

Peter wrote his letter probably a little before the persecution of Christians under Nero, around 64 AD.  According to tradition, just a few years later, in 68 AD, Peter died by crucifixion.  Shortly after that, Jerusalem was destroyed.  God’s people, both Jews and Christians, often suffered greatly in those days.  Judgment indeed fell upon the household of God.

Is something like that about to happen again?  Americans are sometimes unaware that it is happening in many places.  Right around here, I don’t think they will be literally crucifying preachers any time soon.  But, yes, there is going to be a purging and cleansing in the Body of Christ.  Judgment is going to fall upon America and Europe.  The innocent will suffer. 

How can God let that happen?  The Lord will permit judgment to fall because we, both as the Church and as nations, have failed repeatedly to respond to the convicting work of the Holy Spirit.  We have ignored and even condoned injustice, violence, ungodliness, and unrighteousness.  Our hearts have become hard and calloused.  In our arrogance, we seek to merely mitigate judgment while clinging to our wicked ways.

Of course, not all of the bad things that happen are a direct result of immorality, hatred, or indifference.  As Peter points out, we may well be attacked, troubled, and mistreated only because we are Christians and do what is right, in which case we should – hard as it may be -- rejoice and be thankful that the Lord has considered us worthy to be persecuted for the sake of Christ.  We may also be “collateral damage” when judgment falls, though it may be that our Father will make a difference between the saints and the secular as He did when the land of Goshen was spared the plagues of Egypt. 

My prayer continues to be that my own heart would be broken, whatever that takes.  I cannot do better on my own.  I cannot sensitize myself or make myself to be repulsed and horrified by transgression – either my own or that of others.  I can get mad about it easily enough, especially if I am the victim.  What I need, though, is a work of God, for Him to create in me a clean heart and a right spirit.  It’s my only hope.

Let's Get Small

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.  -- Matthew 7:5

 

The title of yesterday’s post was “what this country needs”, talking about man’s craving for right standing with his Creator and playing on early 20^th Century advertising slogans suggesting that the good of the nation depended on some reasonably priced, high quality consumer product.  In a nation of over 300 million on a planet of over 7 billion souls, the choices of one individual hardly seem noteworthy.  Politics, even at its best, thinks in terms of groups and masses, and it is primarily for this reason that political solutions to human problems have always and will always fail.  The programs are failures even when they can be sustained, even when the unintended consequences are less than catastrophic.  Most often, of course, they end in blatant destruction, economic disaster, and bureaucratic tyranny. 

What is needed is a better class of humans.  Communists and Fascists like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot – to give them their bloody due, understood this.  They simply killed off those who would not fit in their systems.  These despots, not unlike many of us, see the other guy as the problem, and, sometimes, the other guy is the problem, but it is mostly a result of him trying to fix me. 

I have always disliked collectivists and statists.  It is, perhaps, bred in me.  We were a clannish lot.  We took care of ourselves, our families, and our neighbors.  If we needed a schoolhouse, we got together and built it.  If we wanted a church, we covenanted together and raised it.  We hardly thought beyond the borders of our township, let alone the county, when it came to solving problems.  When you are dealing with a few dozen people, when there are twenty or thirty children in the one-room school, and Sunday School attendance is fifty, it is easy to realize how vital it is for me to do the right thing and be a decent person. 

It does not take a village to raise a child, but a village does do a better job of it than a massive, bureaucratic, central government.  The further away the center of responsibility and accountability, the less we think what we do makes any real difference. 

Jesus tells us this is not so.  I am inclined to believe He is right.  It does not matter if we find ourselves living in a massive, parasitic, corrupt police state.  What matters ultimately, the only thing that matters ultimately, is my relationship with God.  A nation changes, for the better, when enough individuals change for the better.  You can change regimes, change governments, change political parties, reform laws and policies, but, if you have a nation of collectivists, a nation of individuals who point the finger and blame someone else, something else, you are going to have a corrupt, collectivist nation. 

First, take the beam out of your own eye, even if the other guy doesn’t.  We can easily get trapped in worrying about fixing Washington and getting a better president and a better Congress, pouring ourselves into that effort.  We can complain about intrusive government, militarized police forces, and corrupt, tyrannical politicians.  The truth is that we have the kind of government that a majority of citizens desire.  It does not matter that they are being deceived.  The easiest person to deceive is a deceiver. 

But, you say, I’m not that way.  I have gotten right with God.  Things are still messed up.  What do I do?  Read it again.  Once the log is out of your eye, you can see to get the speck out of your brother’s eye.  Bring some light to the life of your family, your friends, and your neighbors.   We may not be able to move the mountain just yet, but we can get the gravel out of our boots. 

Mountains can, though, be moved, and they will be moved when we address them in faith.  Maybe we will ponder that a little tomorrow.