Flights of Fear

There was another man who prophesied in the name of the LORD, Uriah the son of Shemaiah from Kiriath-jearim. He prophesied against this city and against this land in words like those of Jeremiah.  And when King Jehoiakim, with all his warriors and all the officials, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death. But when Uriah heard of it, he was afraid and fled and escaped to Egypt. – Jeremiah 26:20-21

I was just randomly reading earlier and came across this passage where the people of Jerusalem began to get rather hostile about all of Jeremiah’s negativity.  There was an outcry against the prophets, and Jeremiah was not the only one who was threatened.  I think there is a lesson for us here:  Don’t go back to Egypt. 

Uriah’s escape attempt ends unhappily (vv 22-23):  Then King Jehoiakim sent to Egypt certain men, Elnathan the son of Achbor and others with him, and they took Uriah from Egypt and brought him to King Jehoiakim, who struck him down with the sword and dumped his dead body into the burial place of the common people.  In biblical types, Egypt generally stands in for the world system.  Thus the threatened prophet’s flight into that nation could be interpreted as a warning to those who would resort to carnal means to defend themselves. 

As we read through the narrative of the Apostle Paul’s adventures in the Book of Acts, we see that he occasionally used his Roman citizenship and the laws of the empire to his advantage.  When he was arrested by Roman soldiers quelling a riot caused by his presence, the Apostle advised the centurion of his Roman citizenship to forestall being “examined by flogging” (Acts 22:23).  He was shipped out to Rome after his prolonged imprisonment by the governors of Palestine because he appealed his case to Caesar, as was his right as a citizen (Acts 25).  Yet this same Paul states that “ … the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh …” (2 Corinthians 10:4) and that “… we do not wrestle against flesh and blood …” (Ephesians 6:12).

We should always be careful about resorting to worldly and carnal means.  As Uriah found out, the world’s system is no protection against the world’s animosity.  We know that God uses doctors to heal, police officers to protect, lawyers to defend, and judges to decree justice – sometimes, but the kingdom is not ruled by such.  Again, we have the familiar words of Jesus to guide us, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness … (Matthew 6:33).  Our only true protection and security is to be in Christ, clothed in the whole armor of God and protected by the shield of faith. 

The Rabshakeh was trying to instill fear in the hearts of the men of Judah and Jerusalem, but even the devil will tell the truth when it suits his case:  Behold, you are trusting in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him (Isaiah 36:6). 

Far better to say with a shepherd boy … the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's … (1 Samuel 17:47).

Rebel Souls

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.  You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.  No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.-- 1 John 3:4-6  

John gives me trouble.  I have wrestled with him before, and I probably will again.  Obviously, sin is a rejection of and rebellion against the law of God.  Jesus was free of the sin principle, but He was also completely free of sin, living always, every moment, in harmonious accord with the Divine will. 

Lawlessness is an interesting word.  Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction ...
(2 Thessalonians 2:3).  The man of lawlessness is an antichrist, of whom John says in this First Epistle, there are many.  The lawless ones may, at times, associate themselves with the called-out ones who belong to Christ; however, they are never a part of the Body because rebellion and transgression of God's law are too much their identity.

Jesus is the opposite of lawless, yet He is the greatest revolutionary, leader of the greatest rebellion in all of history.  Whom did He rebel against?  The prince of this world.  Jesus overcame the devil, and in doing so, released us from bondage to that which had ruled over and enslaved us.  Now, the world and its dethroned, deceptive prince no longer have any authority over us.  Now we, too, are rebels, not against the Lord and His law, ... but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12).    

But the reason I have such a struggle with John in his letter is that he makes it sound as though those in Christ must be always free from any imperfections.  I've met some pretty saintly, holy people, but I've never met anyone I thought was perfectly sinless.  Being in Christ, we are delivered from the weaknesses of the mind and body.  That's why the New Testament speaks of having one's mind renewed.  The Christian has a new understanding, new insight, a new way of seeing, perceiving, and interpreting the world and life.  What the Lord does not remove is our "proneness to sin", as Matthew Henry puts it.

We have a new nature.  We can't operate the way we used to operate.  There is now light that shows us the repulsiveness and malignancy of sin.  Nevertheless, we must always be wary of deceit and deception.  Delusions are all the devil really has left.  And we have to be especially aware of our own potential for self-deceit.  But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves (James 1:22).  If we do fail, though, there is always room for reconciliation, for God ... is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.


 

Opposing the Spirit of Babylon

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. --  1 Timothy 2:1-2

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.  You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. – Matthew 5:13-14

This world is a fallen place, corruptible and corrupting, sometimes glorious, sometimes vile.  It’s not my home, but it is where I am, as much as that often annoys me.  Jeremiah had some words for the exiles that I can understand: 

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.  Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.  But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:4-7).

No, this isn’t the New Jerusalem.  We are still in exile; we can’t go home yet.  We’re not really going to change the world, not the way the utopians and reformers think of changing it.  The Church – and by that I mean the mystical Body of Christ – is, though, an agent of God’s grace, an emissary offering light and life and hope to those dwelling in fear and darkness. 

I find it difficult to pray for any of the idiots in Washington or in Austin, OKC, Little Rock, Topeka, Jefferson City, Des Moines, Springfield, etc.  But they need prayer – they need it desperately, because they are idiots, for the most part.  They are people who seek or are drunk on power.  Their position is a way for them to validate their otherwise useless lives.  This is particularly evident in the case of the current resident of the White House and his posse, but they are not the first or the worst.  OK, maybe the worst I’ve seen – at least, the worst since Clinton.    

None of that releases me or any other Christian from the obligation to pray for them.  We don’t know all that goes on, and we don’t have to pray for them by name, but we do need to intercede on their behalf to the end that the citizens of this country and people around the world might live quiet lives of contentment and peace with dignity and godliness.  Our prayers are not likely to turn fools into wise men and wise women (Latina or otherwise); nor are we necessarily going to pray “our side” into office. 

Most of the people on our side have better things to do and are not drawn to getting involved in the travesty that is called “public service”.  There are, of course, those whom God calls to fill crucial positions at critical points in time.  We can usually recognize them, and we should certainly support and encourage them.  Regardless, however, of whether or not those in authority are our kind of people, we owe them, ourselves, our neighbors, and future generations the grace of our prayers on their behalf.    

We cannot take our responsibility lightly, for there is that which opposes us.  There is, as the Revelation depicts, a spirit of Babylon which would rule in suffering, chaos and blood.  We are opposed by “the rulers, … the authorities, … the cosmic powers over this present darkness, … the spiritual forces of evil”.  We cannot defeat this spirit with ballots or bullets.  That may be what it comes to at times, but the battle is already won or lost in the heavenlies. 

I’m not a prophet, and I do not know what is about to happen or where all that we are seeing is headed.  I know only what I am supposed to do:  put it all, all the officials, all the situations, all my fears into the hands of our Father through prayer.

Here Among the Shadows

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. -- John 1:5

Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.  Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness.  If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.” – Luke 11:34-36

In a simpler time, someone said that light floods the whole universe and darkness is naught but shadows.  Given the vast distances of interstellar space, there may be places where the visible spectrum of light is weak and fades.  Our sun is on a wing of the Milky Way’s pinwheel.  Closer to the center of the galaxy we would not be able to see through the night for the abundance of neighboring stars. 

Darkness serves as an appropriate symbol for evil.  Evil, like darkness, is derivative and situational.  Good, like light, is transcendent, absolute and universal.  Here on earth, night occurs when we are in the planet’s shadow.  The sun never sets.  The light is never extinguished.  Darkness has not overcome light.  Evil comes to us like the night, a shadow falling upon us as we go our way.   As shade can exist only because the sun is shining, so the darkness in our lives can exist only because God is Good, all the time. 

Our tendency is to say that evil comes upon us, to see it as having an independent and external source, and there are certainly those who seem to embrace evil, acting upon it and propagating it.  For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12). 

“This present darkness” – surely this means crime in the streets, corruption, injustice, oppression, tyranny, wars and rumors of wars, natural disasters, disease, famine, and so on and on.  That’s certainly how it manifests.  Should I then become a crusader, prohibitionist, preacher, revolutionary, or vigilante?

 I could start by getting the darkness out of myself, lighting the lamp of my spirit.  It is all too often my own self that casts the long, dark shadow in my own life. 

The trouble with saying something is that so much can’t be said and then there is that which should not be said.  It’s like walking on a ledge, no room on one and too much on the other. 

Evil will not go away because we ignore it or deny it.  It is not just “in our heads”.  It was almost seventy degrees here yesterday and will be over seventy today.  There is still a pile of sleet and snow alongside my driveway and right under my window because it is the north side and shaded most of the day.  There was so much still piled up under the window yesterday that my thermometer was reading a good ten degrees colder than all the “official” temperatures around.  The shadow of my house preserved the ice, and the ice, in turn, suppressed the air temperature above it.  For a while it didn’t occur to me why my thermometer – which is usually about right – was so far off. 

Just because evil is a shadow does not mean it is not real, and that it does not have real, objective, observable effects.  Checking just now, I’m still about four degrees cooler because of the ice.  I have my door open and the storm door screen open.  I’m reading 61 degrees on the inside and 57 outside – over the ice.  The official temperature reported a few miles away is almost 63. 

We can understand evil, find out why it is here.  Come summer, when the rays of the sun strike here more directly, there will be no shadow on this wall.  It faces a little east of north, and the sun rising early heats the bricks like an oven.  Evil is not eternal, not permanent.  It is a temporary condition of the season we find ourselves in.  Sometimes the bad things that befall us are correctives, the shadows falling to show us where we need to change, what we must let go of.  

There are those who say that if we are sufficiently enlightened within, we can banish the shadows of evil entirely.  I would agree that we may be free of the effects of evil in ourselves.  It is possible to dispel the darkness from my own heart, and that I ought to seek to do. 

War Machine

Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle -- Psalms 144:1

Thought, memory, knowledge, and wisdom are not limited to the brain.  The brain is certainly a processing center for learning, but it is not the only or even in many cases the primary data storage center.  A wide receiver running a route and a quarterback throwing to him are not relying all that much on brain power to complete a pass on third and long.  Harvard and MIT are usually not playing for the NCAA championship.  The same is true on the side of the defenders, the pass rusher and the cornerback.  A lot is happening that has nothing to do with what we usually mean when we talk about thought.  Yet all of the actions are learned and the result of hours of practice and training as well as game experience.

Muscle memory is a term that has become popular in a lot of areas over the last couple of decades.  It has replaced, to some extent, the older term of hand-eye coordination.  Rhythm, timing, grace, all these are functions of knowledge that reside in the body.  No one can think fast enough to hit a 95-mph fastball.  No one can think fast enough to tap dance, or dance in general.  You can watch someone like me try to dance and realize that it is a long way from the brain to the foot. 

I remember well my first quail hunts as I tried to think through all the pointers I had been given after the covey flushed.  Most of the time I never even got off a shot, and, when I did, it just gave the bird a little tail wind.  It wasn’t until I could stop thinking that I started hitting.  The same thing is true of skeet shooting or shooting a basketball, driving nails or driving a car.  Your brain knows quite well right from the start what needs to be done to ride a bicycle.  It’s your body that is not going along with the program.

Sometimes we can be disparaging of religious rituals, spiritual disciplines, kneeling in prayer, raising hands in worship, and other external forms.  Christianity, though, is more than mental assent.  Faith is more than thinking something is probably right.  Ritual, ceremony, and forms put knowledge into the body as well as the soul and spirit.  The body is passing away, to be sure, but it will be resurrected, saved and glorified.  We were talking about Elisha yesterday.  It might be well to remember that a dead man thrown into Elisha’s grave touched the prophet’s bones and was brought back to life (2 Kings 13:20-21). 

A body that is disciplined in righteousness helps us to live righteously in all areas and enables us to war more effectively against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 

The Belt of Truth

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. -- John 8:44

Most of the time I try not to get too subjective.  I try to stay objective, to look at things from a wider view than just how I feel about it or how it affects me.  I don't mean to imply that I am able to do that cleanly, but I try.  This means that I try not to attribute the worst possible motives to what other people do.  When I read the words of Jesus to those who were attacking Him, my first impulse is to think He is engaging in a rhetorical rebuttal trying to bring those people to their senses.  But I don't think Jesus goes for the hyperbolic much.  When God speaks, that's the way it is.  He literally cannot overstate His case. 

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places  (Ephesians 6:12).

I suppose I am a stranger in a strange land because I find Paul's statement to be very reassuring.  The real nature of our very real war is spiritual.  It works itself out on the material plane sure enough, but there's no need to get too concerned about the temporal, visible aspects.  If we take care of the actual, the derivative will take care of itself. 

There is no reason to ever expect your enemy to admit that you are right.  There is no reason to think that "the spiritual forces of evil" will ever concede.  The great error of "good" people is thinking that going about their business is all that is required, that battling evil is radical or unnecessary.  The truth is that you and I are in a war from the moment we enter the womb, whether we like it or not, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.  The physical face of the enemy changes from time to time, but "the cosmic powers over this present darkness" remain — eternal, cold, and relentless as the blackness between the stars. 

As Peter said, Jesus " went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him".  He was not oppressing people.  He was not making people sick.  He was not doing anything bad or objectionable.  Yet there were people who wanted to kill Him.  This only makes sense if we realize that breaking through illusions is the way that the powers of darkness and evil are defeated.  Illusions are lies, and they are destroyed by the truth.  The devil cannot attack the truth directly.  It is simply not possible.  Instead he attacks the motives and integrity of the individual messenger.  In the case of Jesus, when the agents of Satan could find no other accusation, they became indignant that Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, as if speaking a word or touching someone were a violation of the Mosaic injunction.  The ridiculousness of the accusation is lost in the vehemence of the attack.

We can see the same thing today.  Turn on the radio, watch a news program on television, listen — if you can endure it — to the arguments of the leftists, and you will hear the "passion" of their arguments.  According to them, people like me hate homosexuals because we are against gay marriage.  We hate black and poor people because we want to require a photo identification for voting.  We hate Mexicans because we think that a nation's borders should be secure.  I can expose any of these lies, but let me pick on homosexuals. 

One of my wife's cousins is a homosexual man.  I have known him for decades.  We used to get drunk together.  I love the guy and consider him a good friend.  His father, my wife's uncle, was kind of a jerk.  I think my friend suffered because of that.  I think there are a number of reasons why he was drawn to homosexuality.  I certainly do not object to him having a happy and fulfilling life.  Here's the problem — he is not going to have a happy life.  He is going to suffer the consequences and the torment of pursuing an illusion. 

The proponents of gay marriage will point to "successful" homosexuals, like Elton John, but fame and money can buy a lot of pain killers, a lot of mind-numbing.  Even the most contented homosexuals often contend with addictions and over-indulgence trying to maintain the illusion and keep out the truth.  Like adultery or any other kind of sexual immorality, there is a price to pay for the pleasure.  Homosexuals frequently pay it in a very physical way with the break down of their immune system.  I am not willing to accept that an Elton John or an Ellen Degeneres would not be happier living a straight, moral and godly life.  They would be filled with joy and peace once the lies in their lives were exposed and driven out.  That's not to even point out that for every apparently happy "gay" person there are a thousand living in daily anguish and torment in the depths of their souls.  It is because I love people like my friend that I am opposed to sanctioning homosexuality.  I am equally against infidelity in marriage and sex outside of marriage for heterosexuals.  I am opposed to the idea of divorce.  And it is all for the same reason — it is based on lies. 

I don't have to go out and personally, physically keep people from committing sexual sins because I think it is wrong.  I am quite confident that God has the power to deliver people from their bondage if they are willing to accept the truth.  If they want to cling to the lies, that's not my problem.  Yet, despite all that I have just said, despite that obviously caring tone, despite the liberty that is implied, a person from the other side will read it and call me "intolerant" and "a hater".  Why?  Because I am telling the truth.  The Spirit of God witnesses to my words and to my love in the heart of my opponent, and he or she feels compelled to attack me.  I will be labeled intolerant, not for doing anything to anyone, actually interfering in another person's life, but for holding to and expressing a point of view — a truthful point of view. 

Though I use homosexuality as an easy example, the battle has many fronts, be it social issues, economic issues, education, families, oppressive governments, political corruption, and on and on.  I confess that I have all too often felt overwhelmed.  I have retreated into complacency and apathy.  I have insulated myself with innocuous diversions and isolated myself with petty pleasures while saying that I am not able to do anything.  In other words, I have embraced a lie of false peace.  Real peace is in the battle on the front line. 

Now where did I put my belt?