Not What I Had in Mind

Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.  Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you.  Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. – Joshua 1:6-7

I could use this same title for every post.  As I often say, I am a much nicer person on the internet than I am in real life.

Faith, hope, love – I was thinking about that, rather bitterly, last night as I was filled with anger and frustration.  My first waking thought was one of hopelessness.  Then I decided to get up and have a cup of coffee and see if I couldn’t make it until sundown.  There is no way I can get everything done today that needed to be done yesterday.  I’m like the guy in “Sixteen Tons” – “another day older and deeper in debt”, except mine is “further behind”.  I don’t think I have accomplished anything tangible in the last year.  In other words, the call to “good success” is not really ringing true this morning.

I do not like to fail.  I do not like to be exposed as anything less than perfect – or at least competent and strong.  I am not inclined to yield the field.  I suppose there is such a thing as a tactical retreat.  It could be, I suppose, that the courage I need is not the courage to press on, but the fortitude to admit my vulnerability, the strength to acknowledge that my strength and ability have limits. 

The meek, Jesus said, shall inherit the earth, but flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom.  We are heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ Jesus (Joshua), heirs not of a bit of soil but of the spiritual reality of which Canaan speaks.  This inheritance is sealed and guaranteed by the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Those who followed Joshua typified the death of self by crossing the Jordan River at flood stage.  The Lord held up the waters of Jordan, as He had done on the Red Sea, so that the people crossed, in effect, under the water.  

Every day – especially lately, it seems that the world is poking and prodding me, wounding my pride and then pouring salt in the wounds.  Overmatched, hounded, hurting and hopeless, I fight on – not out of courage but out of fear.  It seems as if I have been here before, and maybe I have.  Israel passed through the Red Sea to find the Law before passing through Jordan to find grace. 

I hope no one else is as hard-headed as I am, as arrogant and defiant, yet cowardly when it comes to living a surrendered life.  It comes down, perhaps, to an idea that if God gives it, it is His; if I earned it, created it, built it, it is mine.  There’s nothing wrong with owning something in the material world – so long as we recall that even our natural strength and ability is from our Father and that even what we can hold in our hands, we hold only as stewards for Him.  

 But on the other side of Jordan – that place we are promised, that Life that is waiting for us to step into, there is no room at all for my inflated estimation of myself.  Pride has to die right here, and if I try to hang on to even a shred of it, it will pull me down to hell.  Under water.  I have to go under, but I can’t stay.  I can let my old nature pull me to the bottom, but it has to stay there, and I (not I but Christ) have to rise.  I can’t hold my breath much longer. 

Out of Sight

How great are your works, O Lord! 
Your thoughts are very deep! 
The stupid man cannot know;
the fool cannot understand this: 
that though the wicked sprout like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they are doomed to destruction forever;
but you, O Lord, are on high forever.  
For behold, your enemies, O Lord,
for behold, your enemies shall perish;
all evildoers shall be scattered

-- Psalm 92:5-9

I knew an old hillbilly farmer who, back in his time, could cradle wheat ten hours a day.  He was relating some of the work he had done cutting his place out of the brush, plowing with a team and a double-shovel, cutting stave bolts with a crosscut, and fighting drought and depression.  There was no hyperbole, no exaggeration, yet it would have made Hercules think twice about signing up.  The old man shook his head as he ended his tale, "I could put in a good day's work, but I never was the man my pap was."    My father would say the same thing, as would I, most certainly. 

There is a tendency in the better class of people to look back upon our predecessors and think that the world is degenerating, that the next generation will not be up to the task.  We all have a kind of apocalyptic vision built into us, believing that, as Paul said, "[E]vil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse".  Things always seem to be on a downhill slope in an avalanche of destruction.  While I do think this was a better country when I was young, I can also remember the '70s and some bad times in the early '80s, Chevy Vegas and Chrysler K-cars, the Captain and Teneille and Donny and Marie on television.  I lived through the Jet Age and the Space Age but also through the Polyester Double Knit Age.  I survived the Carter Administration and Debby Boone singing "You Light Up My Life".  Really, is that insipid song from the Titanic movie any worse than that?

No, some things are actually better than they used to be or at least not any worse.  Television only seems worse because there is so much more of it, but we have alternatives.  We no longer are limited to Cronkite's version of "the way it is", and streaming audio and the MP3 file have freed us from the shackles of tape and vinyl and allowed us to flee the FM radio plantation.  Technology has the potential to give us greater liberty.  I do not much fear RFID chips and scanners for I am confident that anything that man can create, man can hack.  They are going to herd us with drones, are they?  Your drones will be occupied playing three-dimensional demolition derbies in the sky above the Pentagon.  The better the oppressors' technology, the easier it is to turn against them. 

Antichrists and false prophets do not cause me to lose sleep nor do I fear that atheists will soon rule the world and run me into a psych ward.  While traitors are to be despised when not pitied, they are, like Judas, merely pawns upon the board who will suffer according to their understanding of who or what it is they have betrayed.  Nevertheless, in the last several days I have been very unsettled as I consider the situation in this nation and the rest of the world.  Oppression and tyranny have temporarily gained the upper hand.  We are under the control, for the moment, of oligarchs, plutocrats, and fascists demagoguing the votes of the masses who care nothing for freedom but are content to live as slaves given a certain amount of free stuff.  I won't say the Lord spoke to me, but a statement did seem to come to mind out of nowhere:  The wicked shall be removed.

I was not sure what to make of that.  It could be a warning to me to shape up, to get the wicked impulses and inclinations out of my life and thought.  That's certainly applicable.  Before I could think too much about it, I reached the point of reading chapter 17 of Second Kings in which the Ten Tribes of Israel were taken into captivity by the Assyrians.  Three times it speaks of the Lord removing or casting Israel "out of His sight". 

Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight (v. 18)

And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight. (v. 20)

Until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. (v. 23)

He says the same of Judah with regard to the Babylonian exile in chapter 24, verses 3 and 4:   Surely at the commandment of the Lord came this upon Judah, to remove them out of his sight, for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he did; [a]nd also for the innocent blood that he shed: for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; which the Lord would not pardon.

I am not saying that the "wrath of God" is going to fall on America or any other country.  I am not suggesting that we are about to see some kind of Sodom-and-Gomorrah-like judgment fall upon San Francisco or Amsterdam or Rio.  Such things are certainly possible, and I cannot say the Lord would not be just if He rained fire and brimstone down on Washington, D.C., or a thousand other dens of iniquity around the planet. 

I am saying that ... the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There!' for behold the kingdom of God is in the midst of you (Luke 17:21).  I am also reminded of something else Jesus said, that the meek will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5).  The earth will not be left to the unrighteous and the evil but to the just and the merciful and the gentle.  How God's will is to be accomplished none may know but the Lord Himself; however, we may rest in the assurance that the wicked will be removed and Christ will reign over all in truth and righteousness. 

Back in Leviticus 16, we read of the infamous scapegoat, more literally the goat for Azazel — "azazel" meaning entire removal.  The high priest was instructed to take two goats and cast lots between them.  It's not like one goat was going to be lucky.  The "winner" was the one for which the lot fell to the Lord.  It was sacrificed as a sin offering.  The lot for Azazel fell to the other goat.  The priest would lay his hands upon the scapegoat's head and confess upon it the sins and iniquities of the nation.  A designated person would then lead that goat out into the wilderness, carrying away into oblivion and forgetfulness — "out of sight" — the sins of the people.  In some remote area the goat would be released never to be seen again. 

Christ was our sacrifice and His blood was shed as our perfect sin offering.  He was also, though, the one for the entire removal of our sins.  As He was buried and descended into hell, He took those sins out of the Father's sight, carrying them away so that they might not only be paid for and forgiven but entirely and eternally forgotten. 

This leaves humans with a choice.  We can accept and believe that our wickedness has been removed, or we can reject the work of Christ and find that the wicked shall be removed.

Just Add Wonder

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth — Matthew 5:5

A sentiment of superiority keeps us cool and practical; the mere facts would make our knees knock under as with religious fear. — G.K. Chesterton from Heretics

I wonder, in reading through Heretics, about whom a Chesterton would write today. Mark Steyn, he of the sons of the prophets, speaks most often on politicians and popular culture figures — as if there is now any difference between politics and pop culture, which may be a good part of our problem. Chesterton safaried on an intellectual savannah trod by Shaws, Wells, and Orwells, to name but a few. I'm afraid he would hardly waste a round on the lock-step lemmings, swarming rodents, and shambling opossums that have inherited the plain today. Perhaps there are no Chestertons because there is no quarry worthy of such hunters. Did Nimrod stop to weep for himself when he saw the end of Smilodon?

Truly the old, bold socialists, eugenicists, and strong men who stalked under the noon sun are gone, replaced by careful and cowardly creatures of the night that scurry from shadow to shadow lest we see their true form. Apart from the insulated and the tenured like Peter Singer, few of the "pro-choice" advocates in our day admit that they long for a better race of men through more selective breeding, and, by the way, far fewer men for the most part. They have learned the chameleon trick of taking on the surrounding colors, especially the color of freedom, as they lurk and wait to strike. It's just me probably, but I'd rather take my chances face to face with the grinning tiger of the day than be struck by an ambushing death adder.

I can't say as I blame the skulkers, at least here in America. Coming out and saying that you are for de-populating the earth, turning North America into a theme park, and breeding slave races on the old government plantation probably isn't going to get you a whole lot of votes or funding for the U.S. Department of Indoctrination. Camouflage and stealth: it's not just for tanks and planes any more.

In Chesterton's day he could still talk about the "humility of the man of science", a phrase many of us find quaintly amusing. Even Chesterton was amused by it for he saw their day passing as surely and swiftly as those hunters with the Clovis point saw the passing of the giant ground sloth or the mastodon. Projecting forward, he could see the inevitably of rising pride and the creation of the lordly scientific priesthood who shake their big, rattling gourds at us in the Twenty-First Century of what is now called — so appropriately — the Common Era.

The path of devolution is always the same. First comes wonder with its beloved foster child, humility. Humility gives birth to discovery. Discovery always rebels against his parent, sows his wild oats, and reaps his bastard offspring, power. Power and pride form their unholy union from which comes their first-born, unintended consequences, then his twin brothers, death and destruction. A rebirth of discovery is always denied to power and pride. If we doubt God, He answers us thus. Still, the reign of power and pride may be long, counter-balanced as it is by God's grace in raising up children to humility from the very stones of the earth.

That's Chesterton's point in the opening quote: that merely looking at things as they are tends to make us more humble, to set ablaze our sophisticated cool. We humans are very good at thinking that a name for something is the same as an explanation. It's not the facts that poison humility; it is someone's interpretation of the facts. We could walk well on the stones in our path. It's the bumperstickers that trip us up.

I even miss the good old days when we thought science was impressively objective, isolated, and concerned only with discovery for discovery's sake. You know how it used to be in science fiction when the lone, eccentric genius created some grand new thing in his basement la-BORE-atory. The emotional humanist hero would come along to ejaculate, "But think what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands!" Yep, those days are long gone. Too many of our current heroes are Boromirs who see the power of darkness as a "gift" that they may conquer, only to become that which they vanquish.

Reading through the New Testament, everyone has come to the Beatitudes. To this day, every time I read through the Sermon on the Mount, I fight the same thought: He's got to be kidding. Jesus, I find myself saying, You can't be serious about this stuff. Anybody who tries to follow Christ's teaching here will be eaten alive in this world. If you are going to try this, your best bet is to go ahead and die young because otherwise you'll wind up living in a cardboard box and getting mugged on a daily basis. Shoot, they'll probably even take your cardboard box.

The better part of me says, though, that cynical-me is wrong. He meant what He said, and He meant for us to live it. He did not promise that it would be easy. There are snakes in the brush, and, while old Smiley is gone, there are still lions and tigers and bears, not to mention jackals aplenty. All that's missing are the meek — or as more modern translations sometimes say, the gentle.

The meek are ones strong enough to be gentle, brave enough to fear, and bold enough to be humble. They inherit the earth because those who reject meekness reject man and his abode along with it. We'll inherit what we appreciate — that is, what gains value for us, or that to which we give or add value. We wonder at ourselves, at the cosmos, at the Creator. The legitimate explanations of science only serve to deepen our wonder, to add even more value to that which we have been given.

The world will always prefer the giants who look from a distance with disdain down upon the meek and — don't miss it — the lowly. They are impressed by his man-made armor of snark, his heavy weapons of vulgarity and mockery. They see no vulnerability and gather fearlessly in his wake.

Across the way comes one of those hillbillies, some kid just in from herding sheep and goats. Perhaps the crowd behind the giant smells the intruder before they see him, for indeed he must smell like sheep. They see him pause and stoop at the brook to pick up five stones cut out from the mountain and polished smooth without hands.

The humble shepherd looks up at the giant. He doesn't seem to see the armor or the shield or the spear. He looks the giant in the eye and sees the bare seat of his opponent's thoughts. The hillbilly says, "He's so big! How can I miss?"