Christian Nation Building

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. -- John 15:10

It is almost like a tautology, because the vital commandment of Christ is to abide in love, to love God and to love our neighbors.  As we are told elsewhere in Scripture:  Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13:10).

Love does what is right by others.  Love also confronts, protects, and defends.  Love sacrifices for the good of those we love.  Sometimes that means not defending ourselves against slander.  Sometimes it means letting air and light into evil.  There is no way to keep the commandments of Christ or abide in His love apart from the Holy Spirit. 

Lewis says somewhere that a truly Christian society would be “right wing” in its moral behavior but very nearly communistic in its social structure.  In other words, it would not be vastly different from the rural community where I grew up.  Though we were far from perfect, people cared what their neighbors thought – for the most part, and we could count on family, friends and neighbors giving aid to those in need.  Everyone I knew was a cultural Christian if not an actual church-goer. 

Culture, without the salt of practicing Christians, becomes corrupt over time.  Communism and socialism attempt to impose the acts of love through force.  In a different context, this is known as rape.  The socialists never seem to learn.  The instant they have control of the power of the state we are all going to live in their imagined utopia – whether we like it or not.

The reason the communist is so hostile to Christianity is because Christians take care of one another without the coercive power of the state.  The state can’t be god in that case.  The priests of the state cannot gain power over people who don’t need to be forced to do the right thing.  This is not to mention how the “right thing” as defined by the state is what is good for the state and its ministers rather than what is good for one’s neighbor. 

I don’t want a government that is Christian.  Christians do not need much government.  We don’t need “faith-based” initiatives.  Take away all the federal regulations, all the programs and bureaucracies – and leave the money it takes to run a massive and equally inefficient government in our pockets.  Stop being hostile to Christians and the country will become a better place.  Get rid of welfare.  The Church will take care of the homeless, the orphan, and the unwed mothers.  Christians will build hospitals and clinics that anyone can walk into if there is no Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance.  There will be more St. Jude’s.  We will fund the medical research.  We don’t need government schools.  We can build our own and educate our children as we see fit with Christian values. 

Of course, none of that can happen until we kill all the lawyers.*

*Just kidding

A Temple Eternal

… And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.  But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away. – Ezra 3:11-13

One of the accusations brought against Jesus was that He spoke of destroying the temple then raising it back up again in three days (Matthew 26:61, Mark 14:58).  John’s gospel gives us the statement directly from Jesus in context (John 2:18-22).  Jesus had driven the moneychangers from the temple.  The Jews gathered round and asked Him, more or less, who He thought He was taking that kind of action on His own.  What sign are You going to show us, they wanted know, to justify Your usurpation of authority.  Jesus replied that if they were to destroy the temple, He would raise it up again in three days.  Literalism and Asperger’s being nothing new, someone objected that they had been building on the temple for forty-six years. 

Like the older generation -- those representing the Law of Moses and the priesthood of Aaron, in the days of Ezra, some compare the elegant simplicity and grace of the Gospel to the stately, formal, complex, and, perhaps, baroque requirements of the Law and find themselves grieving for the loss.  They fail to see the beauty and liberation of Christ’s Melchizedek priesthood.  They weep, longing for the orderliness of Aaron and the solidity of the stones raised by Solomon. 

The heart is soft.  It is subtle and easily moved.  The temple of stone does not move.  It is set in time, still, a monument to God, a testimony that lasts through generations.  Though it may stand for five hundred years, a hundred lifetimes of the priests who serve within, it, too, is temporal.  Even if not overthrown by the hand of man, wind, rain, and dust, heat and cold, sun and ice, root and tendril, even the shifting of the bedrock below will bring it to nothing, leave it a ruin buried like dry bones in the earth. 

Man, every man, is eternal.  Our bodies pass away and are laid aside like the tabernacle of Moses, but the golden ark at the heart in which dwells “the law of the Spirit of life”, overshadowed by the presence of God himself goes on forever. 

The order of service in the temple was predictable, regular, and precise.  It could be intricate and elaborate, but it was comprehensible.  It could all be known by the experts.  This is not the case when the heart of man becomes the dwelling of God, when the Spirit asserts His undeniable precedence over the letter.  Aslan is not a tame lion.  The Law of Moses can be made to jump through man’s hoops.  The wild Law of Christ, the Law of Love cannot, and we must, instead, surrender to it. 

It is no wonder that some weep as other shout for joy.  Freedom is a fearful thing, but the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

Law Man

Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. -- Psalms 119:18

The law is, above all, revelation.  When Jesus said He came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, He meant that He would reveal it in practice, inhabit it and give it life.  The law isn’t just about telling me how to live and please God – though we could do worse than see it that way, and many of us do. 

From the very first the law was meant to reveal the nature of God, His concern for justice, His hatred of pettiness, oppression, and of our general lack of love toward one another.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is so different from the concept many cultures had of their gods.  He was not capricious.  He was not in it for Himself.  He did not use people or laugh when they failed – though He does indeed laugh at their arrogance. 

So God looks at all these people wandering around on the planet.  How does He make them understand He’s not like their idols and the gods of their imaginations?  You have to give the devil credit here, because he did a fine job admitting that there is a spiritual realm while perverting the idea and effectively convincing people that the gods are like them except with more power and immortality.  God has to correct that.  He picks one man, his family, and his descendants.  He sets them apart, allows them to be enslaved and then delivers them.  The very first thing they learn is that their God is superior to and completely unafraid of the gods of the Egyptians.  Jehovah makes a mockery of them all.    

The next thing God reveals is that He requires obedience and trust because He knows, not just more than humans, but better.  Then He gives them His Law.  And what does He tell them?  I am God.  You don’t have to worry about any other gods.   You don’t have to try to appease the things these other tribes and nations worship when you go into this new land I am going to give. 

The next thing you need to do is take one day out of seven to meditate on Me and My law, to turn from the daily grind, to rest and remind yourselves who I am. 

The reason the Sabbath is so important is most of the law can be reduced to doing and conforming.  The Sabbath is about transforming, about meditating – we might even say, marinating, in the Law, having the opportunity to see myself reflected in God’s Law.  By finding out who God is, I find out who I really am. 

Our next step is to realize how important family is.  Honoring our father and mother means that we recognize something is uniquely vital in our family relations, something that may be nearly impossible to get from any other source.  This is that first triad, as Bob often points out, that reveals to us the relationship within the Godhead. 

Outside the family, God wants us to understand that other people have the same rights, the same hopes, the same divine spark that we have.  They are not beasts to be exploited.  We have to respect their rights to life, property, and freedom.  We need to respect their family and their relationships, to see the sacredness of marriage, that the vows we take before God are to be taken with reverence and fear, and never to taken lightly. 

This is God’s nature.  Honor, respect, beauty, and truth are all found in the law.  God knows what is real.  He knows what is true.  He does not want us to be fooled or to live in a delusion because He loves us.  Wondrous things, indeed.

Puce or Mauve

Lileks used puce in today's Bleat.  I thought it was a color -- like puke, perhaps, so I looked it up:

puce -- a colour varying from deep red to dark purplish-brown

I thought, Wait, that sounds like the carpet we had in a house, which I was told to call "mauve".

mauve -- a moderate grayish violet to reddish purple, or, any of various pale to moderate pinkish-purple or bluish-purple colours

What does any of that even mean?  And where does is leave my all-time favorite color, maroon?

 maroon -- a dark reddish brown to dark purplish red.

Purplish red or reddish purple, of course, that's a huge difference.

You have wearied the LORD with your words. But you say, How have we wearied him? By saying, Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them. Or by asking, Where is the God of justice?  -- Malachi 2:17

For my people are foolish; they know me not; they are stupid children; they have no understanding. They are wise—in doing evil!  But how to do good they know not. -- Jeremiah 4:22

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! -- Isaiah 5:20

Like puce, maroon, and mauve (the gay puce), a lot of things in the world are really shades of gray.  They are nuanced.  The distinctions are not always clear cut, and how we see a situation does vary, depending on the light.  Customs and attitudes that made perfect sense in a more agricultural, family-farm, Waltons kind of world have to be re-examined for the high-tech, social media, urbanized environment today. 

Yet, there is good.  There is evil.  There are things that ought not be done.  Some cultures are rotten, wicked, and vile.  Some aspects of our culture are disgusting. 

I don’t know what puce is – and neither does anybody else.  You want to call it puce?  It’s puce.  You want to call homosexuality normal?  It’s not.  It’s a pathological state that is often associated with extremely self-destructive behavior.  I know that it was acceptable in Greek culture.  So what?  Infanticide and slavery were also acceptable that same culture.  It doesn’t sound too enlightened to me. 

I don’t mean to pick on homosexuals.  Calling stealing “wealth redistribution” doesn’t make it right, either.  Promiscuity, fornication, adultery, divorce – those things are all bad, no matter how common they are these days.   Self-defense is good.  Killing those who pose no threat is bad.  Making women less than human – whether done by Islam or feminism – is wrong.  Lying and deception – even especially when done by the government, is evil.   

Like Charlie Daniels, I am a simple man.  There’s the law of the jungle:  might makes right.  There is the law of the mob, AKA, democracy.  Then there is the law of the land.  In this country, it is the Constitution.   If a person doesn’t like the Constitution, there are a whole bunch of other countries in the world. 

The same is true with God’s law.  His law is truth and reality.  The fact that we don’t always like it and that it sometimes thwarts our desires doesn’t change it.  This is how things are.  This is good.  We can call it evil.  We can rail against it.  We can pass our own laws to counter it.  In the end, we will conform to it or be judged and broken by it. 

As we were saying yesterday, once we are in Christ, the law is written on our hearts.  We receive the clean heart and steadfast spirit for which David pleaded (Psalm 51:10).   We see things differently, clearly.  The carpet is definitely maroon.

 

Escaping the Elements

But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? -- Galatians 4:9

I am an advocate for common sense.  We can avoid a lot of trouble in life solely by paying attention to our sensory inputs, being courteous, and keeping our mouths shut.  When it comes to spiritual truth, however, we need revelation.  Our sense data and the common principles of horizontal relationships are inadequate. 

The Gentiles to whom Paul preached had little to go on other than elementary rules.  From those rudiments, they constructed, we might say, their gods who were fickle and petty, plagued with the same weaknesses as humans.   Occasionally there were flashes of inspiration and glimpses of the absolute as God laid the groundwork for the coming revelation in Christ.  The nations often had an archetype they could link to the gospel of Jesus Christ.  There was nothing as full and complete as the Law and the Prophets given to the Jews, but everybody had something. 

Nonetheless, Jew and Gentile alike were, for the most part, in bondage to rules, ceremonies, rituals, and rites meant to appease divine wrath and gain divine favor.  The Jews had the advantage because their God, though requiring careful approach and respect, was perfect.  He was, indeed, “jealous”, not willing to share worship with any idol, not subject to depiction in any form.  He was, in many ways, as Paul proclaimed to the Athenians, the Unknown God. 

Through Christ, though, we come to know God, even more we are known by Him.  He could not know us, be associated with us, befriend us, or call us His children when we were unrighteous and unholy.  We were strangers, alienated from our Father.  The only way for us to be accepted was through the perfect sacrifice, the Cross.  God has been satisfied in His justice, His righteousness, and His holiness.  We are now family.

I no longer have to offer a lamb or a calf on an altar to be in God’s favor, to receive His grace and forgiveness, or to have access to Him in prayer.  I don’t need to worry about being able to get to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles.  God blesses me because I am His child, adopted in Christ – not because I give my tithe.  To ask the one who has put his faith in Christ to go back to appeasing God through ceremony and animal sacrifice is an affront to the blood Jesus shed.  

Yet, I still give to those in need.  I help out ministries.  I don’t commit adultery thereby keeping my wife from committing murder.  I don’t steal, and I try not to lie or covet.  I did my best to honor my parents, and I have no other gods and no graven images.  I’m assuming it’s OK to have some depictions of Jesus and angels and saints.  I do wish I could convince the boss that the buck-naked waterboy statue is of the devil.  I’m still working on the cussing thing and the Sabbath.  I don’t do or not do those things because I’m trying to impress the Lord, but because I want to live and act in a way consistent with my new nature. 

I try to pay attention to the Spirit and follow His leading rather than going by what I see and hear in the natural realm.  I do not want to be in bondage again to the elements of sense.   I do not want to act out of fear but from faith, because … the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17).

The Law is good.  The disciplines, rites and ordinances of the Church are good – baptism, communion, prayer, fasting, etc., but they don’t make us right with God.  Only the Blood of the Cross makes us right.  We are set free as children of the King and citizens of the Kingdom, and we ought not be in bondage to anything -- good or bad.