The Long and the Short

And Job again took up his discourse, and said:  “Oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness, as I was in my prime, when the friendship of God was upon my tent, when the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were all around me, when my steps were washed with butter, and the rock poured out for me streams of oil!” – Job 29:1-6

Now that I have gotten older, I have a tendency to look upon the world as increasingly degenerate and decadent, and I think there might be some objective evidence for that, just here in this country.  Not knowing the story of Job, a person might read the verses above and think that Job is waxing nostalgic for the days when things were better and more wholesome, for Faded Love and Crocodile Rock. 

Job has gone through a great and heart-rending series of losses, and it is all inexplicable to him.  He has no way to comprehend the reasons for what has happened, and no reason he can find for believing that his suffering has an eternal and transcendent meaning.  From his perspective, life has taken on the aspect of chaotic randomness and appeared to have lost all its significance.  He longed for the time when he thought differently, when his faith and righteousness seemed to be bearing fruit and making the world a better place. 

As believers and rational creatures, we consider that our existence is part of a grand design governed by laws, that good pleases God and is rewarded by Him and that evil is disobedience and will be punished or corrected.  There is a reason for us speaking of the “patience of Job”.  Through Job’s story, God is revealing that sometimes faith only works in patience, in that most descriptive word, “longsuffering”.  We wish there was a shortsuffering wherein worketh Instant Karma with bolts of lightning delivered on the spot to fry the wicked while the good are all “drinking that free bubble up and eating that rainbow stew.”

So you have Evil Roy and lovely, unsullied Miss Innocence.  God ought to protect Miss Innocence from Evil Roy.  At what point does the lightning strike?  Is it when Roy conceives his first little thought of violating Innocence?  What if he sees that his course is wrong and changes his mind?  Maybe instead of a lightning bolt God could just use a cattle prod?  Those of us that have one call it “conscience”.   When we are the ones ignoring the prodding of conscience, we are not usually calling for higher voltage.   That’s the problem with free moral agents:  they are just as free to be immoral. 

I knew a girl who was molested and abused by her father.  He ended up in prison for other crimes.  She decided to call him one day.  She told him how much he had hurt her and caused her to suffer.  Then she thanked him.  She said that without that pain she would not be the person she had become.  She would not be as strong, not as much a person of unshakeable faith had it not been for the vile torture inflicted on her by a person she ought to have been able to trust. 

I don’t know how someone does that.  I can’t imagine.  But, she was right.  She suffered long, yet she found a way out.  It was not by going back to a lost past made golden in memory, though, no doubt, she had, like Job, wished for that at times.  It was to go through, to patiently keep pressing on in faith that, somehow, some way, someday, the senseless would make sense. 

Going Long

But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap.  For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth.  But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man. – Luke 21:34-36

I am what is sometimes called a partial preterist with regard to much of Matthew 24, Luke 21 and similar passages.  The siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and the expulsion of Jews and Jewish Christians from the region by Rome, along with other horrors that accompanied the prolonged conflict and judgment partially fulfilled the prophetic words of Jesus.  

In the verses above the Lord is warning both 1^st Century and 21^st Century hearers.  Those whose eyes would see the temple destroyed needed to heed His words as have many throughout the intervening years, and people for many years in the future should listen as well.  History is like a wild river, rapids and falls of turmoil and terror between rare and welcome pools of peace. 

The conflicts may not always devolve into open, armed battles.  Despite the fact that Americans have been mostly spared from wars on our own soil for the last hundred years, we have not been spared from violence.  Calamity may fall upon an individual just as it does upon a nation or a people. 

At 4:48pm on Tuesday, February 19, 2014, a ten-year-old girl named Hailey Owens was walking back home from a friend’s house.  She was grabbed off the street by an abductor who was captured by police less than four hours later. 

Too late.  Hailey, who looks a lot like one of my granddaughters, was dead. 

Neighbors witnessed the abduction, tried to intervene, and attempted to pursue the vehicle into which Hailey was dragged.  They weren’t able to stop what happened.  Craig Wood, a 45-year-old school employee, has been charged.  The details are too disheartening and gruesome for me to relate.  One of the local television stations has a page dedicated to the various elements of the story, including the community’s shock and heart-broken response. 

Tragedies can be big or small, major or minor, widespread or personal.  They are still tragedies, and, as Jesus said, they “will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth.”  No one escapes trials and troubles, pain and suffering.  The innocent suffer with the guilty.  No one ever said it was going to be fair. 

It is hard to imagine how a young child could somehow deserve inhuman torture and murder simply on the basis of being born a fallen creature.  Good or bad thought patterns seem hardly adequate.  We mostly have to believe that justice, retribution, and rewards transcend our visible, physical lives.  I am deadly serious when I say that nobody would want to live in a world where people like me start embracing nihilism. 

Jesus calls us to endurance, to live and to stand despite all the boiling wickedness of the world, all the irrational injustice and vicious persecution. By your endurance you will gain your lives (Luke 21:19). And I have my doubts that He is talking about your life here in the material world.  He speaks of persevering to gain eternal life, His kind of life – abundant and everlasting. 

The unfathomable part:  that life is available to both persecuted and persecutor, oppressed and oppressor, victim and victimizer.  There stands the strait gate and the path beyond, frightening in how little room it offers, what it demands we leave behind in order to pass through.  It’s time to choose. 

Here comes the Judge.

Christian Pacifism and Submission to Authority

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.   Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.  For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.  Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. – 1 Peter 2:11-17

The key to understanding Peter’s statements about submission to authority is in verse 12 -- Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 

Christianity was a much-maligned religion, from the very first.  The religious leaders of Jerusalem brought Jesus before Pilate and accused Him of “…misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king” (Luke 23:2).  The early Church was considered a heretical cult and frequently attacked with egregiously false accusations as can be seen throughout the Book of Acts.  Christians were being persecuted on the basis of lies and rumors, charged with disloyalty and disruption.

In order to counter these allegations, Peter advised all followers of Christ to live as wisely and quietly as possible for the sake of their neighbors by – as much as was possible – being law-abiding and loyal subjects of Rome.  He commanded the Christians within the Empire to live circumspect and holy lives to the betterment of their own souls, and also that those who lived around them might see the indictments leveled against the followers of Jesus were baseless.  Their attitudes and actions would "...put to silence the ignorance of foolish people".

Essentially this has nothing to do with opposition to tyranny, oppression, injustice, evil, or unrighteousness.  There is a historical context in which Peter’s words make perfect sense and can be clearly understood.  The founding of the Church in the midst of a pagan, polytheistic society happened exactly one time in history.  There is one unique moment in the flow of time (eternity is another matter as we discussed recently) when Jesus was crucified, when the message of the Cross began to be proclaimed openly, no longer in types and shadows. 

The Church was established and the world has been changed ever since.  The Founders were children of a Christian culture.  They might know Aristotle and Plato, Horace and Virgil, but these ancients were filtered through Paul, Aquinas, and Augustine.  The Cross did its work in bringing truth into focus.  The foundation had been laid.  America was built upon what existed. 

When the king claims to be a Christian yet acts and rules in a way that is contrary to Christian principles, the circumstances are very different than acts by an avowed pagan or a secularist ruler.  The Founders understood that King George III expressed the same faith and values as the majority of his colonists – in general.  He could be held accountable for his views against the plumb line of revelation. 

So today we who are Christians in a somewhat less Christian, we might say, post-Christian world are yet in a different situation than that to which Peter spoke.  The principles apply, but the exact situational constraints differ.  We must be witnesses of holiness and righteousness, living godly lives that testify to our faith.  This has not changed.  However, we need not submit to whims of the despotic and dictatorial.  We are free to resist laws and requirements that violate the God-given rights of the individual as revealed not only in Scripture and the traditions of Western Civilization but even those encoded in the Constitution, usually acknowledged as the supreme law of the land, as a restraint upon an oppressive, overreaching central government. 

I can choose to willing surrender my own rights, my own property, even my own life rather than resist totalitarian dictates.  I cannot choose to surrender the rights, property, or lives of others.  I must and will do what I can to support and defend those who are being robbed, defrauded and abused whether the agent of injustice is an individual, a mob, or a state.  

Friends, if you saw a man snatch a purse from an elderly lady in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, you would have every right to run him down and beat him if need be in order to restore that woman's property.  It does not matter if the city passes a law forbidding such action.  That makes it illegal.  It does not make it wrong.  The law itself is wrong.  If the attacking thug is wearing a TSA uniform and has the permission of his or her superiors all the way up to Washington, D.C., abusing a citizen is still wrong and no law will ever make it right.  

You can draw your own conclusions and follow your own conscience.  I give no advice or counsel other than to say, pick your battles carefully and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.    

And the Mule He Rode In On

And Absalom met the servants of David. And Absalom rode upon a mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth; and the mule that was under him went away. – 2 Samuel 18:9 (KJV)

This may be confusing verse if you don’t know much about Absalom who was one of the sons of David. The context is that Absalom had rebelled against his father as king and was well on his way to taking over the kingdom until he ran into this particular oak tree. Having driven David and his followers out of Jerusalem, the rebellious prince paused to gather a greater army before pursuing his father’s group of loyalists. This gave David enough respite to organize resistance and send out his personal bodyguard along with a determined group of hardened fighters to meet Absalom’s forces. The battle took place in rough terrain, and the advantage fell to David’s men. When Absalom became entangled in the thicket and was killed subsequently, the rebellion was ended.

Absalom had pursued a political strategy contrary to his father’s reign for a number of years. The seeds were sown when an older half-brother, Amnon, raped his half-sister, Tamar. Tamar was apparently a full sister to Absalom who was angered that their father did not punish Amnon for his incestuous atrocity. To this point, we find Absalom a sympathetic character. Even when he deceptively carries out the vengeful murder of Amnon, we remain understanding, but Absalom was not content with the blood of his half-brother. After returning from exile, Absalom plots and plays a clever political game to enhance his own popularity while fueling discontent with his father’s rule among the people of Israel.

In addition to exposing Absalom’s vengefulness and political ambitions, the Bible says that he was quite a handsome man with a great deal of very thick, beautiful hair. His physical appearance seems to have played a part in furthering his popularity as well. One might suspect that Absalom was at least a bit of a narcissist, possibly somewhat vain, having a high opinion of himself. Though David was deeply flawed, he remained always a man after God’s own heart. Where David was God-centered, Absalom was self-centered. Despite all the advantages of his position in life, of his intelligence, and of his good looks, Absalom’s life is marked by an absence of trust in the Lord, and, as a consequence, by an absence of peace and fulfillment.

Some of us have a hard time with the idea that justice can embrace mercy. For some things it seems there should be no mercy. Like Absalom, I often see particularly heinous crimes perpetrated and think that there isn’t anything cruel or unusual enough to even it up. The arguments of those who reject God are rife with this sense that God should not allow suffering or injustice. The rejection of Christ is often fueled by the same indignation that led Absalom to rebel against and reject the authority of his father, David, the man who loved him most in the world, who would have extended mercy, compassion, and forgiveness even to him – for his own crimes.

Absalom represents the good man who thinks that usurping the place of God is no big deal. He sees the mercy and grace of God but misunderstands, misinterprets it as indifference and injustice. It is up to man, he thinks, to take matters into his own hands and set this right, based on his own opinions, his own standards, and his own ideals of righteousness and good. This may work for a period of time, but there always comes a reckoning – not necessarily in an overt or direct judgment of God, but quite commonly in a loss of control over one’s life.

Having denied God and acted toward the Lord in rebellion and indifference, man is able to rise no higher. He cannot reach heaven, but he also finds the material mule that he depended on is now indifferent to him. Narcissistic self-regard has tangled him up, tied him to the circumstances of a limited human life. The mule moves on. Man hangs in painful helplessness, ensnared by the very thing in which he gloried -- the strength and power of the human mind with its many thoughts.

Unable to break free to return to the thoughtless animal life of earth, and even less able to rise above circumstances and draw close to God, the rebel becomes easy prey for Satan’s deadly schemes just as Absalom was an easy mark for Joab’s spear as he hung suspended from the oak. In the end the exaltation of man concludes in the death of all that is truly and uniquely human. The glory of man is cast into a nameless pit and buried in ignominy.