Saints and Cynics

All your allies have driven you to your border; those at peace with you have deceived you; they have prevailed against you; those who eat your bread have set a trap beneath you— you have no understanding. -- Obadiah 1:7

We want to trust the people, believing that our friends and family have our best interests at heart, as they sometimes do.  The only Person we can trust fully and completely without exception, without reservation is God.  He is enough.  If I trust God then the weaknesses and betrayals of allies and companions can be handed over to Him.  It is a great comfort and takes the pressure off us, as well as off our friends.

Relationships suffer when one or more of the parties ask others in the relationship to be as strong, dependable, steadfast, and giving as God is.  This is especially true if the person so depended upon doesn’t have the right connection to the Lord.  We can be a channel of God’s love, mercy, power, and faithfulness, but we can never be a source.

By submitting ourselves to God we can transcend the limitations of our self-life.  The self-life of even the best of us will fall short in satisfying the yearnings of another’s heart.  In ourselves, we will disappoint, stumble, fail, and sometimes fall.  But in Christ, my heart becomes a funnel for the love of God, and the more I let out the more He will pour in. 

If we are living life according to the flesh, more often than not, we are going to be caught up in dramas, schemes, deception, and treachery.  People we thought we knew, thought we could rely on, will let us down, turn on us, stab us in the back.  As a natural cynic, I am never terribly surprised by this, but I would rather be a born-from-above “cynic” like Jesus: 

Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.  But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man (John 2:23-25).

Jesus knew that we can’t be trusted, that we have our own agendas and ulterior motives, yet He never let that stop Him from doing good and doing what was best for each of us.  It never made Him stop loving us.  Maybe it made Him love us more for He saw how alone and helpless we are apart from Him.  He knew His Father would take care of Him.  He wants us to know it, too, and to follow in His path of pouring our lives out for love.

Rules of Engagement

You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men -- Mark 7:8

Much of religion is little more than a way for truth to be compromised, and human thinking to be justified.  When people talk about how God told them to do this or that, we ought to listen carefully for what those people are going to get out of it.  The “will of Allah” or the “will of God” too often become political tools for manipulating and controlling a group or a nation. 

Jesus never called His disciples to political revolution.  He did not come to overthrow the Roman government or to establish a particular form of government.  When He quoted Isaiah 61 in the synagogue (Luke 4:18-19), the good news He was proclaiming to the poor was not income redistribution or Marxist class struggle. The captives He came to liberate were not those in physical chains.  He came to set all of us free from the bondage of sin, from the prison of distorted perspectives, and from the vanities and illusions of a merely material existence. 

Christianity can work and has worked in every imaginable political system.  It has been nice to have had the opportunity to live in a prosperous, mostly free-market economy, to have enjoyed the benefits of political and religious liberty and the enlightenment and innovation it brings.  But it isn’t necessary. 

To be a Christian means being filled with the life of Christ, to walk in humility, meekness, kindness, and love.  The Romans led those First Century followers of Christ out into the Coliseum to be tortured, humiliated and killed.  Tyrants of all kinds – some calling themselves Christians as well, have oppressed believers and sought to defeat the Truth across nearly twenty centuries since.    

I am not a prophet, but I can read the writing on the wall.  The western world has shredded, squandered and disavowed its Christian heritage.  Our political leaders, intellectuals, and media idols call good evil and evil good.  The seeds have been sown and sprouted.  The stalk has reached full height, matured and ripened.  The reaping is at hand.  A whole lot of people are going to get exactly what they want, and they are not going to like it at all. 

Regardless of the way the world goes, the commandments of God are the same.  I am to love the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love my neighbor as myself.  I am to take up my cross daily and die to self.  I am to give no place to selfishness, self-justification, or pride.  If I am called to lay down my life, I am to do it joyously.  I think I can do this.  The Lord has never asked me to do anything that I couldn’t do. 

One more thing, though, that those who despise and mock Christians sometimes fail to grasp.  When I say that I have to love my neighbor as myself, it means all my neighbors, especially the weak, the innocent, and the helpless.  I am obligated to protect them as much as I can for as long as I can by whatever means necessary.      

The Time Traveler

You do not delight in sacrfice and offerings; You open my ears to listen. You do not ask for a whole burnt offering or sin offering.
Then I said, "See, I have come; it is written about me in the volume of the scroll. I delight to do Your will, my God. Your instruction resides within me." — Psalm 40:6-8

In his book The End of Christianity, William Dembski states: In a fallen world, the only currency of love is suffering. Indeed, the only way to tell how much one person loves another is by what that person is willing to suffer for the other. We know we love another by what we are willing to endure on his or her behalf — what we are willing to give up, to sacrifice.

We all know what a sacrifice is, don't we? If I go down to Burger King and give the person at the counter some money, is that a sacrifice? Of course it is not, since I expect, in a very short time, to get a Whopper in return. (Eating a Whopper might be a sacrifice of another type, but we don't care about that right now.) Is it a sacrifice if, instead of buying a burger for myself, I buy one for someone else — my wife or another family member, for example? What if I buy a meal for someone I don't know, the person in line behind me, a bum on the street?

The question is if I expect to "get something out of it", even if it's just a good feeling, am I really sacrificing anything? Can a person who believes that God rewards our good deeds ever really be said to be making a sacrifice? Philip Henry said, "He is no fool who parts with that which he cannot keep, when he is sure to be recompensed with that which he cannot lose." The more famous variation is from the martyred missionary Jim Eliot: He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.

There are people without whom I cannot imagine heaven being heaven. I am sure such a thought is at least some small part of the reason loving and thoughtful people like George MacDonald and Hannah Whitall Smith are so sympathetic to forms of Universalism. The flip side is, though, that there are some people with whom I can't imagine it being heaven if they are present. And I'm sure there are those who feel that way about me. Still, I would sacrifice a great deal to be assured that those I love will be spared suffering.

While we are imagining things, let's imagine that the Lord came up to me one day and said, "Mushroom, My old pal. You've been doing well lately. I'm going to give you whatever you want. Just ask, and it's yours." If He asked me that today I might say that I want my grandchildren to have happy, healthy, prosperous lives filled with all of His blessings, and, at the end of a long, full life without suffering and trial, that they be welcomed into His Presence for eternity. Suppose the Lord looked at me, and said, "Mush, I can do that, but it won't be cheap. In fact, it will cost you everything you have in this life, and you will have to lose your soul, suffering in hell for eternity." I'd like to think I wouldn't hesitate.

The thing is God will never make an offer like that. You can get a similar deal from less reputable trader, but, as Faust and many others have learned or will learn, it doesn't work out well in the end.

In the vast view of eternity where it is always now, God saw those He loved with His infinite and divine love. He saw them falling. He saw them suffering and lost. He said, "I can save them, but it won't be cheap. I'll have to lay aside everything that I AM, become one of them, lose everything and suffer in their place."

There is an argument among some theologians and teachers about whether or not Jesus died "spiritually". Some believe that He so identified with us that He, for a time, lost His soul and went to hell in our place, bearing our sin. Others say that, though He suffered and died as Man, He did not die spiritually and to suggest otherwise is heresy.

I don't know, and I suspect the argument misses the obvious point. What I do know is that our little frame does not show the whole picture. A severe beating and torture and six horrible hours hanging on a cross are what we see. What we don't see is "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world". We don't see the Lamb of Revelation "looking as if He had been slain". God is eternal. What the Lord Jesus suffered He suffered in eternity — where there is only now.

Hop-a-long Christianity

And if your foot causes your downfall, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. – Mark 9:45

This verse is part of a series where Jesus tells His disciples that if your foot, hand, or eye causes you to miss life it would be better for you to cut off or pluck out the offending part. It’s not a good idea to take this too literally, but what Jesus says it true.

Everyone is familiar with the classic O. Henry story called “The Gift of the Magi”. It tells of a poor but loving young couple who want to buy one another a special gift at Christmas. The woman wants to buy her husband a platinum chain for his cherished pocket watch. The man wants to buy an expensive tortoiseshell comb for his wife’s long, lovely hair. She sells her hair to a wig maker to buy the chain, and he sells his watch to buy the comb. It’s one of those fictional true stories.

We recognize the truth of “The Gift of the Magi” because we all know that love is a matter of sacrifice. As the song says, “Love hurts.” But it is a good thing. If we are not somehow maimed, hampered, or impended by our relationship, we know nothing about love. Does love embolden us, ennoble us, enable us? Certainly it does. Love is liberating. But like all the really important issues of life, it requires us to embrace a paradox. We are liberated by being imprisoned. The husband may refer to his wife as “the old ball and chain”, yet that anchor is exactly what frees him to do what he would not and could not otherwise do. So, too, when we would enter into the real life of God, at some point we are going to be called on to give up, not merely our sin, but our virtues.

Jacob was a man of strength. When he first met Rachel, she was bringing her sheep to water. A great stone covered the well, and it was necessary for the other shepherds to gather to remove the stone so that all the flocks in the area could be watered. Jacob moved the stone by himself. He later spoke of his endurance in the face of hardship and toil. He was not a man who was afraid of hard work, long hours, or suffering. Jacob was a fighter, and he was tough. When he wrestled with the Angel of the Lord, he fought throughout the night, unwilling to surrender or be defeated. The Lord granted him blessing and favor in response to his persistence. It came, though, with a price. The Angel touched Jacob’s hip and threw it out of joint. For the rest of his life, Jacob walked with a limp. He was maimed.

In my anger, at times, I have made the statement that I don’t need anybody. And that’s true. If all I want is death, I can die whole, complete, and alone. But if I want life, I have to be yoked, shackled, and wounded. The more I try to hang onto freedom, to reserve parts of myself from sacrifice, from being maimed, the more I understand hell where, as Jesus said, the devouring worm is never still nor satiated, and the fire never stops burning.

To enter into life, I will lay my best on the altar. To hold God’s hand, I have to give up mine. To see the Lord, I have to give Him my eye. To walk the strait and narrow, I have to walk with a limp.