J'accuse

For I am ready to fall, and my pain is ever before me.  I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin.  But my foes are vigorous, they are mighty, and many are those who hate me wrongfully.  Those who render me evil for good accuse me because I follow after good. – Psalm 38:17-20

It’s because I’m too cynical, but, when I read something like that, my first thought is, Sure.  People do attack us and accuse us unjustly and unfairly.  I think it happens more in literature, on television, and in the movies than in everyday life.  It happens more in politics than in the real world.  Most people have better things to do and nothing to gain from playing stupid games and coming against those who have done nothing to harm them.

There are exceptions.  These are the psalms of David who was both king and prophet.  He was, as a monarch, most certainly the object of intrigue and hostility.  Before he ascended to the throne he had been hunted and harried by Saul for simply being one chosen by God to rule His people.  In this, Saul is a type of Satan, one who accuses and seeks to destroy the elect. 

I don’t know that this is Devil Week in the Jungle, but it is possible that I often fail to deal with the reality of an adversary.  I have seen too many people blame the devil for too many things.  The good Christian who is five-by-five, lives on steak and cake, and considers walking around the buffet table exercise lambasts the devil for causing his heart problems.  The devil may have encouraged him to have another piece of pie, but the fork was in his own hand. 

Certainly there is a demonic presence behind gluttony, just as there is behind some kinds of fear, behind envy and jealousy, lust and greed, pride, rage, and other sins.  The truth is I don’t need a lot of encouragement to please myself or to do wrong. 

Still, Jesus – and I consider Him the Authority – dealt with the devil and demons, not as mere influences but as entities with intelligence and wills.  As Lewis said (and I frequently quote) in the preface to Screwtape:  There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils.  One is to disbelieve in their existence.  The other is to believe, and to feel and excessive and unhealthy interest in them.  Lewis never met, I don’t suppose, Flip Wilson or any of the “pigs in the parlor” Christians I have known.  I would add a third category for those who find the devil and demons a convenient excuse for their bad situations.

I have to wonder, though, if my reluctance to blame anyone or anything other than myself does not contain just a touch of pride.  I am a practical, cause-and-effect person.  There’s a reason for everything.  “Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see,” was drilled into me in childhood, though I think the hard heads of my Scots ancestors inclined me that way in any case. 

Yet, there are times, especially over the last fifteen years or so, when I have felt I was targeted for opposition by a malevolent personality.  Feelings are more easily moved than reason and less trustworthy, but they are not always, therefore, wrong.   I have encountered evil that all but took a black, hooded form like Tolkien’s Nazgûl, and I have talked to otherwise trustworthy people who claim to have seen and been threatened by such things – long before they were so depicted in the movies. 

There are angels.  When they appear, their first words are usually, “Fear not”, because their stature and presence is, apparently, innately terrifying.  Paul says that Satan himself may appear as an angel of light, a disguise designed to deceive and lead astray the unwary.

When we do get off the path of righteousness, it is an opportunity for the accuser to come in and make matters worse.  We will feel that we ought to deny or excuse or hide.  David, though, had the right idea:  I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin.  Let’s get that out of the way.  Now, about these who are attacking me, Lord, I could use a little help.  They are too much for me. 

There are fallen angels.  There are demons.  Demons are parasitic, and they feed themselves on human fear, anguish, regret and similar emotional energies.  We cultivate the ground and sow seed to raise our tomatoes, corn, and beans.  Demons cultivate the minds of men and sow seeds of fear, hatred, and confusion to raise their favorite dark energies.  If we let them, they will lead us to commit wickedness so they might grow fat on our desperation, shame, and guilt. 

We don’t have to put up with it.

This is the Way the World Ends

The world was constituted first in Adam, well pleasing to God and obedient to Him. It was man’s world, and in man it was summed up. In man the world fell into the darkness of selfish pursuits. Man became materialized in spirit and dragged down so as to become worldly and sensual. The world is man’s world in his fall from God. – from Alford’s Commentary as quoted by E. M. Bounds in Winning the Invisible War, emphasis added.

The master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted astutely. For the sons of this age are more astute than the sons of light in dealing with their own people. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of the unrighteous money so that when it fails, they may welcome you into eternal dwellings. Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and whoever is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much. So if you have not been faithful with the unrighteous money, who will trust you with what is genuine? And if you have been unfaithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you what is your own? No household slave can be the slave of two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be slaves to both God and money. – Luke 16:8-13

The world exists in and through man. The planet and its nonhuman inhabitants preceded man physically, but, as Gagdad Bob might say, man preceded the world. As stated in his sidebar, Robin’s CREDO is a quote from St. Francis, “Don’t change the world; change worlds” – which also wraps it up without using tape.

Man was meant to serve as a steward under the Lord and rule over His cosmos. The parable Jesus relates in the first seven verses of Luke 16 tells of an unrighteous manager who had not been doing right by his employer. The manager learns that he is about to be dismissed from the master’s service. Not being that enamored of begging or physical labor, the conniving steward decides to use the employer’s resources to create a golden parachute. He calls those together who owe the master a portion of their production – either because they were tenant farmers or because they borrowed to put in their crops. Whatever the debtors owe, the manager significantly reduces the amount. The debtors are naturally grateful, and the deceptive manager can probably now depend on getting some help from at least a few of them once he is turned out. The gratitude of the debtors is understandable, but what seems odd is that the unrighteous man’s employer actually congratulates him on his astute maneuverings, though the employer has suffered a considerable reduction in his potential income. I wondered if maybe the boss didn’t figure it was worth it just to be rid of him.

Adam ruled his world until his fall. At that point, the world of man came under the dominion of Satan. Man became, not a king, but a slave. When Christ came into the world, He did what neither the devil nor the prophets could have guessed. He didn’t take the Adamic world out of Satan’s control. He created a new one in Himself. And, actually, this new world existed prior to the Cross. As soon as Jesus began to gather disciples, the new world – which He called the kingdom – was open for business.

The problem remained that man was enslaved to the old world and to Satan. Try as they might, the followers of Jesus in His earthly ministry could not really enter the kingdom. They could see it in Christ. They could believe it, just as the Old Testament saints had by faith. But they remained in chains, married, in effect, to the devil in Adam. In fact, if you go a little further in Luke 16, you will read that the Pharisees were listening as Jesus said, “You can’t serve God and money”. Luke says that hearing this, the Pharisees scoffed because they thought wealth was not just good to have but a sign of God’s blessing for their supposed righteousness. The Lord responds to them in verses 15-18:

And He told them: “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly admired by people is revolting in God’s sight.

“The Law and the Prophets were until John [the Baptist]; since then, the good news of the kingdom of God has been proclaimed, and everyone is strongly urged to enter it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter in the law to drop out.

“Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and everyone who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”

Okay, so Jesus slaps down the mocking religious elites by telling them that the things they value make God sick. Then He talks about the change that has come and how people are trying to enter the kingdom, though they are hindered by the unyielding requirements of righteousness under the law. At the end, we get what looks like a non sequitur. Does Jesus just gratuitously throw in a bit of teaching about divorce and adultery? Where did that come from?

Paul helps us out in Romans 7:1-3: Since I am speaking to those who understand the law, brothers, are you unaware that the law has authority over someone as long as he lives? For example, a married woman is legally bound to her husband while he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law regarding the husband. So then, if she gives herself to another man while her husband is living, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law. Then, if she gives herself to another man, she is not an adulteress. The Lord is no adulterer.

Again, man is meant, or was meant to rule his cosmos as a steward under God. It was never intended that man should rule apart from God or be ruled by the world. To release the world is one thing. Man has tried that. All the great religions have striven to renounce the world to some degree and live in peace. Yet as long as man is in Adam, united in a covenant with the devil, the world can legally maintain its hold.

So, what to do? Should the devil be killed? Should the world be destroyed? That would break the hold, right? I suppose, but, first, the Lord is no more a murderer than an adulterer. Second, to destroy the world and/or Satan, God would have to destroy man. Remember, the world with Satan as its necessary antipode (lest it be merely a plane), is derived through man. Adam is tied to Satan. If Satan goes down, we all go down with him, in Adam. We’re stuck – but for Christ.

This is the unique and exclusive power of Jesus. Jesus is Man, the Second Man to be exact. He’s in the world, sinless, not under the curse, untainted by Adam’s fall. If He is willing to go to the Cross and die, though death has no legal power over Him, then the world ends. By identifying Himself with Adam’s race, the Incarnate Christ can take all into the grave. When He is raised, He can bring all with Him as well. Death has severed the marriage bond to the world and its prince. The Law no longer stands in the gate keeping the new man from the kingdom.

Man is transformed. His world is thus transformed. The kingdom has indeed come and is accessible to all in Christ, the Last Adam. The remnants of the old world remain, still deceiving, still enthralling, still empty and unsatisfying. At some point the last of worldly will be gone – the world will pass away and the kingdom will be all.

Not with a bang,
But a whispered,
“It is finished.”

What’s the Matter With the Mill?

If you know that He is righteous, you know this as well: everyone who does what is right has been born of Him. – 1 John 2:29

This is the last verse in chapter two, but it is also the main theme of a major part of the third chapter. Doing right or not doing right gets thrown at us repeatedly as we move forward in John’s letter.

Paul said, “In me, that is, in my flesh dwells no good thing.” This is not a view that is appealing to modern man. Of course there is good in us, we argue. We merely need education and enlightenment, the benefits of a proper diet, the right kind of exercise and entertainment. It might be a good thing, too, if we could wean people off that “old time religion” and their various superstitions.

Jesus said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit.” This poses a problem for me. All of human culture -- education, economics, government – all is born of the flesh. There are stand out exceptions – Van Gogh, Mozart, the Kawasaki KL650, Tina Turner, Toy Story 2, the .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, Dune, but by and large the world system is born of the flesh. It is all a corruption of the ideal, a derivative of the Truth, a shadow of the Real. That does not mean that it is “evil” as a whole, and it does not mean that some things are not better than others. Maryanne is better than Ginger. The Articles of Confederation may be better in many ways than the Constitution. Sure, it might be that by now we’d need a passport to go from Kansas to Missouri, but is that really a bad thing?

The spirit and the flesh strive one with another. The spirit is willing, as the Man said, but the flesh is weak. We recognize and home in on those flashes of truth that break through upon us like lightning out of the storm, but we will never be able to really grasp the truth and make it real and manifest in this world.

Or will we? What if we were able to stop operating out of the flesh and began to build by the spirit. Pentecostals frequently quote Zechariah: “Not by might nor by power but by My Spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.” Look again at what John says, “If you know He is righteous”. What if we could trust Him perfectly and completely in every situation? We could if we knew He was perfectly righteous and trustworthy. What if we always walked and worked and lived by Kingdom principles instead of the second-hand rules of the world system?

To be born of Christ is to do right, not in some legalistic way – though doing right is better than doing wrong, even when the motive arises from the flesh. That is, the world was a better place when we were more polite, decent, hard-working people, but I don’t think we were that much closer to the Kingdom. To do right as Christ did means to shut the old man down, ignore the world system, and walk according to the dictates of the Spirit. Spiritual direction arises out of studying Scripture, praying, and meditating – not out of analytical thought.

Now, at this point, I’m supposed to say there is nothing wrong with analytical thought. I would normally say that, except that I know it is not true. There is something horribly wrong with it when we think it will deliver us from evil or lead us out of bondage.

I wish I had a simple dictum to follow, an elegant epigram that I could impart. Don’t shop WalMart downwind from the Amish (wonderful, good-humored people just deodorant-challenged). But I don’t have anything like that. What I do have is that the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, able to divide soul from spirit – as we’ve talked about before.

The world system is organized and Satanic, opposed to God and hostile, in particular, to Jesus Christ. Yet the sad thing is that the world is always trying to mimic God, fake righteousness. Satan is attempting to create an imitation of God. It’s called the state. He imitates the grace of God; they call it welfare. He imitates salvation; they call it wealth. He imitates deliverance; they call it education. He imitates healing; they call it medicine.

I wish I could say that by rejecting politics – an ersatz religion for some, or not watching television, not listening to popular music, not going to doctors, being uneducated, or whatever – I wish I could say that would make us spiritual. It won’t. Discernment, dividing soul from spirit is as much an external necessity as an internal one – if there’s any real difference.

We can’t operate the way world does. We can’t fall into their traps, but there may be two working in the field then one will be taken and the other left. Two will be grinding at the mill, and one will be taken while the other is left. We will look like we are doing the same thing as the worldling many times, but we are doing right because we’re born of Him.

Dust in the Wind

So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life…”

“… In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” -- Genesis 3:14, 19

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. – Luke 22:31,32

Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind -- Kansas

After the Fall, God enumerated the curses upon His creatures, beginning with the serpent, then Eve, and ending with Adam. Though he was the highest order of creation, the sovereign under God, Adam was, we might say, animated dust. We are dust in the wind – that is to say, dust carried by spirit. As enamored as some of us are with the claymation part of ourselves, it is merely a vehicle that will very soon pass away.

The devil, as personified by the serpent, feeds on that very aspect of our existence which is temporary and transient. If we can keep that in mind, we will see that the process, though it may be painful, is not catastrophic. Our true existence is untouched by the fangs of the serpent. As Jesus makes clear to Simon Peter, the devil is allowed only to sift us. In the end, what appears to be loss is similar to the “loss” suffered by wheat when the chaff is removed. Our authentic self is revealed, and we move into our kingdom position.