Happy New Year! 202: The Year of the Desert?

I want to heartily wish you all a happy New Year!  Wow.  No one will miss 2020, I am sure.  

Yet, maybe 2020 was our time to leave Egypt and be led out into the desert by God through these trying times.  

Let's unpack this analogy for a minute.  Ray Vander Laan does a wonderful teaching on the book of Exodus.  He points out that the Israelites lived in the land of Goshen--and it's a beautiful region in the Nile Delta.  The Israelites were "extremely powerful and filled the land." (Ex. 1:7)  

But they were not in the Promised Land and serving the God of their ancestors--Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Instead, they were surrounded by temples, statues and monuments that proclaimed that the gods of Egypt were supreme and the Pharaoh was a god as well--the embodiment of divine power to bring about and sustain maat.  He brought order--maat--to chaos and all of Egypt knew he kept it by obeying the dictates of the gods.   

The Israelites saw nothing else but the enormous monuments that shouted of the supreme power of the gods and Pharaoh. 

Then it got ugly.  A new king, who didn't know the history of Joseph and his contribution to the welfare of Egypt, came to power and was shocked about how many Israelites there were.  Then he condemned them to slavery.

Stop for a moment.  How so like us?  We live in the slavery of a sinful nature, but let's be honest--it can be like Goshen.  It's not so bad.  The "fruits" of the flesh are beneficial to us, for we have a kind of freedom to do what we want, when we want--in other words, it takes no effort to live by the values of the flesh: 

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal. 5:19-21 NIV)

So Goshen is easy.  Easy to forget why we are here.  Easy to forget the value of one another.  Easy to forget that we are not meant to live in accordance with the flesh, for it is fallen and hostile to God.  God gives us purpose, not following the pursuits of our flesh.  We are not in the Promised Land when we are living in the Goshen of our flesh.  

Ray Vander Laan makes the interesting observation that God, through an angry Pharaoh, allowed slavery to take over the lives of the Israelites.  Otherwise, they never would have left Goshen--there wasn't a reason to--but being enslaved and subjected to state-sponsored infanticide was the catalyst for the people crying out to God.  But as Vander Laan points out, they just cried out--to the heavens:

Years passed...But the Israelites continued to groan under their burden of slavery.  They cried out for help, and their cry rose up to God.  God heard their groaning, and he remembered his covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He looked down on the people and knew it was time to act. (Ex. 2:23-25, NLT).

They didn't know their God nor their purpose which was to be in a covenant relationship with God--to be His people and live in the land He chose for them long ago.  He wanted them to be His, in His land, under His forgiveness and in His way of life.  

So Goshen had to become miserable for them to want to leave. 

The flesh and sin have to become miserable for us to want to leave.  We hear God's call for reconciliation and restoration, but we have to feel the weight of the flesh--the bondage of our nature before God's call becomes a song of freedom.  

Deliverance requires a Deliverer.  God sent Moses.  He tried to liberate the Israelites on his own, by striking dead an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite.  He murdered the man when no one was looking and then hid the body.  When we try to slay the flesh, one sin at a time, trying to be good, hiding it in the sand, so to speak, we end up more miserable as before.  Moses did.  He was afraid after he received taunting the next day from two of his fellow Israelites, and he ran away.

So do we.  To the desert of guilt and shame. Yet, even there, even there, God waits for us.  He waited for Moses in the burning bush.  He waits in Jesus on the cross.  He calls us, tells us who He is and how He sent Jesus to die for our sins.  He wants us to be in Him, living out the purpose He chose for us long ago.

The desert transforms our focus from just being about us, to realizing we cannot survive on our own--our character, tainted and marred by sin--is a liability in the desert.  Why?  In order to survive, we must be entirely dependent on God for spiritual food, water and guidance.  Manna, quail, and pillars of smoke or fire are metaphors for this time we experience in the desert.  Yes, we want to flee back to Egypt, where we know the lay of the land and how easy it is to live according to our nature. 

But Egypt isn't the Promised Land.  In between the two places is the desert.  The desert builds our character--for it strips away all superfluities--and causes us to look at our lives.  It schools us to see how fragile life is, how the world mistreats us and how our value vacillates depending on what group we are consigned to or how we allow others to treat us.  

Was God leading us out of Goshen--a materialistic, narcissistic America where money trumps integrity--into a desert of a pandemic, civil unrest, brutality, lawlessness and verbal abuse to make us stop and reevaluate who we are?  Sure, we want to go back to the slavery of Goshen--it's sure a lot better than the unknown aspects of the desert...right?

God, using this year of the desert, 2020, asked us:  "Who are you?  Why are you here?  Do you have purpose?"

God will use 2021 to continue to call to us.  

Take a few minutes and listen to this short ten minute video.  It really captures the one thing our sin nature can never give us:  purpose.  That Egypt, with all of its wow factor, will not bring order to our chaos.  Man's efforts are mere silent stones and will not lift us out of the chaos of our culture. 

Listen, enjoy and I wish you all a happy New Year, in Him.  Tell me what you think. 

https://youtu.be/8fcLxYLJdCI

Via con Dios.  

America: The New Rome

We have been looking at loss and suffering--very germaine topics in today's world.  Let's look at America for a moment. 

One argument against Jesus being the long-awaited Messiah is peace did not come to the world when He arrived nor when He left.  

People still went to war, committed atrocities and destroyed everything in their path.  

People persecuted each other and always found some group to blame for their woe, leading to all sorts of terrible behavior.

People's attitudes towards God, each other, the planet and morality have waxed and waned, with some problems being solved while others were created.

So, what difference did it make that Jesus came?

Well, look at America right now.  God has been removed from every corner of public life. The songs played in stores at Christmas time are entirely secular, with an occasional carol thrown in, but that is quite rare.  (If I hear "Last Christmas" or "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" one more time, I may not be responsible for my actions. Insert smiling emoji here.) We protested having the Ten Commandments removed from a park in Boise several years ago.  Boise, Idaho, is not exactly a haven for liberal thought, and yet the monument was taken out.

Back when my kids were little, about 30 years go, the city I lived in, in northern California, passed an ordinance that prohibited the singing of any carols that mentioned "Jesus" in them.  When one kindergartener asked to sing "Silent Night," the music teacher retorted that it was "illegal."  I am not making this up--I was sitting in my daughter's class that day and watched this woman silence a little girl's request. 

I was born in 1960.  AD, not BC.  I went to school in California, where, at Christmas time, we played with dreidels, sang "Hanukkah, O Hanukkah," had a Christmas tree in the class room, ate Christmas cookies and learned how to sing "Silent Night, Holy Night" in German. 

God was an unseen presence in our country, where going to church was important, not swearing was equally as important and being kind was expected of everyone.  Did everyone follow Christian morality and its values?  Of course not.  But God was still there, looking out for us.  Maybe a kind of divine Policeman, who expected us to be good whenever and wherever we could.

My dad was a virulent racist and one angry hombre.  My mom was an alcoholic.  My brother was a sneaky violent young man, who got involved in drugs at a very young age, so no, we were not the Cleaver family, and Father didn't always know best.  We stopped going to church when we were very young.  But God was still there, in the culture, in the larger picture, even if my parents didn't reflect knowing Him in their daily lives.

When I was little, we celebrated the birth of Jesus and sang Christmas carols about Bethlehem, three kings and a little baby in our home and in our culture.  

Yet over the decades, God has been marginalized a little more every year.  Usually diversity, not favoring any religion or not wanting to offend others has been the reason, and so nativities, monuments and overt references to God have gone the way of the buffalo.  

If Christianity is mentioned now, it's usually in disparaging terms--anti-this or that, or responsible for all societal ills.

So, look at America now, with God having been removed from the culture: Angry protestors take to streets to burn, kill and destroy.  Lawlessness in the new law, and the police are told to stand down.  Respect?  Nah--that's just an old Aretha Franklin song.  Name-calling, false accusations, half-truths and constant bashing of certain groups is an everyday occurrence now.  Now even our election process, our democracy, is in jeopardy.  Wow.

I have watched God be removed from public over the last 50 years, and our society has not improved.  In fact, it's far worse.

Jesus came to bring a light to a dark empire, where blood sports, infanticide, child marriage and homosexuality, infidelity, and slavery were part of the everyday way of doing life.  

Without Jesus and what He brought--a value of loving God, ourselves and our neighbor, darkness would still be our everyday, every decade, every millennium.  

I am watching America return to a pre-Christian place, a kind of new Roman empire. We need Jesus to come and bring His light into our lives even more than ever, into our culture, into our leaders, whether in church or in the public sphere. 

A society where the self is god is going to be ugly, for the self is ugly.  Jesus brought us hope for a new self, one where God's love and law is written on the heart.

America is standing at the crossroads.  We can either rock around the Christmas tree, or follow the star to a Baby whose life will change ours. 

On the Brink of Loss

I grew up during the Cold War.  The US and the former Soviet Union were engaged in a deadly dance of what was called "brinksmanship."  How close could we get to an all-out nuclear war?  Could we pull back from the brink in time?  Then you add the policy of MAD--Mutual Assured Destruction.  So, the idea went, if we did not pull back in time, and we went to war, we would bomb each other so effectively, that there would be no winning.  Both countries would be refuse dumps.  If anyone did survive, the world would be enveloped in a perpetual nuclear winter and to quote REM: "It's the end of the world as we know it."

Was it that very idea of a war with no winners and a decimated planet that kept us perched on the brink, not venturing out because the cost was too high?  We were humbled by Trinity, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Russia's "Tsar Bomba" with a projected yield of 100 megatons.  100 megatons.  If that doesn't keep you from getting too bellicose with your enemy, nothing will.  

So, despite the threat of nuclear war, I grew up in a world where the possibility existed but didn't happen, because the outcome was just too horrendous.  

The prospect of what humans had created actually made us stop and think that deployment was a death warrant writ large for humanity.  

So when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, I breathed a sigh of relief along with the rest of the world.  As a little kid, I heard my mom tell of a TV repairman who came to our house and told her that he and his wife had made it "over the wall."  I didn't comprehend what that meant as a six-year-old, but as an adult, the wall tumbling down, like a modern Jericho, meant we were done living on the brink.

But I have seen another kind of war--a war again with brinkmanship.  How close can we come to sharing the gospel without driving the person away?  In other words, we don't actually go to war over someone's soul--we just lure them into church with a culturally relevant service, with a worship team's musical effort duplicating a rock concert and a pastor that is hip, up to date and tells stories and makes jokes.  We will talk about Jesus more as a Life Coach--someone who wants you to live your best life.  

Don't talk about the yucky bits--hell, eternity apart from God and how Jesus had to die to secure our salvation.  The early church talked about His death, burial and resurrection--for that was earth- and heaven-shaking news.  But I have sat in enough churches that are seeker-friendly and in their effort to keep people coming back, the gospel is preached, but the overall message is filled with lots of funny stories, props and video clips, to soften that hard label of "sinner." 

So, this brinksmanship of not offending the culture but trying to preach Jesus but don't drive people away but people need Jesus but if they don't come back they won't get saved but don't emphasize hell and maybe put away the offensive cross from the front of the church but sing songs with concert lighting and smoke machines to create an experience but keep the message light and make people feel welcomed but avoid those hard-hitting Biblical passages about...well...you get it.

But having been on the brink for a while, we see a lot of churches and a lot of Christians who are focused on themselves.  I knew I was in trouble in a previous church when we changed the name from "worship service" (focus on God) to "Sunday experience" (focus on self).  The pastoral staff was sincere, but every Sunday, we stood on the brink.  Yes, Jesus was preached but we never said or did anything that would make anyone feel that the gospel was confrontational.  The main campus pastor even used a stuffed bear up on an altar to discuss what a sacrifice was.  I think.  I was so horrified at the lack of sensitivity to the sacred I really don't remember.  

So, standing on the brink of just enough Christianity to call ourselves Christians reminds me of what Jesus confronted when He began His ministry.  

He was appalled at what the religious leaders had done to His Father's faith.  The Law was drowned in minutiae of how little a person could get away with and still be obedient.  The leaders had cozied up with the Romans so they could operate the Temple with little to no interference.  The people were  burdened with no hope or consolation from the faith in the One True God, because the leaders misrepresented what God demanded of His people.  

Their brinksmanship led the leaders to crucify the very Servant that Isaiah extolled in order to keep the Romans at bay:  

"But some went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the leading priests and Pharisees called the high council together. “What are we going to do?” they asked each other. “This man certainly performs many miraculous signs. [Jesus had just raised Lazarus from the dead] If we allow him to go on like this, soon everyone will believe in him. Then the Roman army will come and destroy both our Temple and our nation.”

Caiaphas, who was high priest at that time, said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t realize that it’s better for you that one man should die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.” (John 11:46-50)

The leaders' policy of brinksmanship prevailed a while until 70 AD, when everything the leaders thought was important was destroyed by the very people they had sought to accommodate all those years before.

We dodged the bullet of an all-out nuclear exchange.

The Jews did not dodge the bullet of the Roman empire's fury.

We have stood on the brink for a long time now, accommodating the culture under the pretext of making Christianity relevant.  What do we have now?  Churches that are branded, packaged, streamed and extol rockstar pastors who get people in and keep 'em in--that bigger is blessed and pleasing to God.  Right?

Who, on the other side, is playing the part of the Soviet Union, as it were.  It's an increasingly hostile culture in America towards Christians and their "intolerant" views on Biblical teachings.  The litmus test on whether or not a church person (pastor, singer, teacher) will be acceptable is their position on homosexuality and transgender issues.  If we are vague enough or accommodating enough, we get to go on talk shows, as if that is the highest achievement we can have as modern American Christians.  Woe to someone who stands on the Word without compromise, as Jesus did.

He paid dearly for His intransigence against the prevailing culture of His day as to what was acceptable. 

We are to be messengers, upholding the Word of God with no apologies or back pedaling.  But we are not willing to pay the cost.  Hence, we continue to stand on the brink of truth of the gospel. 

The culture glares at us from the other side.  

The Jewish leadership sadly found out that you cannot sustain accommodation with the values of the world.  At some point, the culture will demand that Christians choose.

I don't know what the bullet that is coming will be, but I don't think we will dodge it. 

Redemption's Operation

I am sure that everyone, in one way or another, is suffering.  I am positing that this planet is a war zone, and like all war zones, suffering is all too common, and kindness is shown far too infrequently, given the magnitude of the suffering.  

"The Diameter of the Bomb" captures how suffering afflicts not just those nearest an event but how it ripples out and touches more and more people.  The poem is by Yehuda Amichai, a modern Israeli poet.

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.

Isn't that we reaction we all have, as the pain rolls out and we suffer more and more, that God is either outside the circle of our suffering or perhaps He doesn't even exist?  Circles are measurable--their diameters--yet suffering defies basic geometry and having made the circle so big, is it possible that even God cannot be in it or is beyond it?

God cannot be measured; if He is defies space and time in His majesty, how can He be unaware of what we are going through in space and time? 

I used the analogy of the D-Day invasion that God did leave the eternal courts of heaven, and stepped into space and time.  He wrapped Himself in flesh and blood, narrowing His circle down to one human being: a poor carpenter's son from Nazareth.  

His birth was both celebrated and condemned.  From the East, three kings appeared at the door of a humble house with gifts fit only for a king.  Another king, in a jealous rage, ordered his men to appear at the door of every house in Bethlehem, and search out all baby boys.  The streets under that star were filled with wailing and that star was reflected in small pools of blood.

That Baby's entrance into this war zone was marked by the murder of innocent children.  His cousin would be executed years later; His followers would be executed themselves.  He, too, would fall under the murderous gaze of the authorities, and would die a hideous death.  

You step onto the shores of planet Earth and you step into sin, atrocity and death.  Sin is well fortified here, just as the Germans were on the beaches of Normandy.  The beaches were lined with German embankments and the Allies were mowed down on what became known as The Longest Day.  As these soldiers disembarked, they knew that they would most likely die.  Yet, they stepped off those landing crafts anyway.  10,000 did die.  But they kept coming, moving up the beach and coming down out of the sky behind enemy lines. 

That is what Good does.  It steps off the landing craft and goes into the chaos with only one goal: victory.  Evil cannot be partially conquered; it must be utterly removed.  Good keeps on coming despite whatever Evil throws at it.  

Jesus knew that redeeming this sin-zone, war-zone planet would be costly.  The destruction is so widespread that no one escapes it--Jesus included.  Evil's fortifications were everywhere, starting with the murder of those Bethlehem boys.  

Jesus' healing ministry put Hell on notice that such evil had an expiration date.  Demons throwing children into the fire, women selling their bodies, disfigured lepers, sons lying in coffins, daughters dying on cots in poor homes, greedy tax collectors, corrupt religious leaders, decadent kings, amoral governors, rapacious insurrectionists--all were present on God's "D-Day"--the Son landed and He would fight to the end to bring about a final conquering of sin and death.

But Jesus didn't direct this redemption operation from a bunker far away from the battle lines.  He Himself was on the front lines: He drove out demons;  He forgave broken women; He raised those sons and daughters from death; He enlisted tax collectors; He decried corrupt religious leaders; He stood in front of kings and governors; His life was swapped for an insurrectionist and He died a criminal's death, having personally committed no crime. 

Our suffering results in loss--of friends, family, children, peace of mind and security.  We are appalled at just how far the enemy reaches into our lives and into our circle.  

Jesus experienced loss, over and over again.  Having sacrificed Himself to paid the wages of humanity's sin and having risen from the dead, He now truly knows what it means to suffer as a human being.  

Knowing how evil operates on this planet--without cessation and without mercy--He stepped on the shores of our Normandy anyway.  He knew He would die.  His Father told Him so as He bid heaven good-bye.  His Torah told Him: sacrificial death is required to reconcile a sinful people to Almighty God. Isaiah told Him: The Suffering Servant would be so disfigured by sin's fury that we would not even recognize Him.

But He came anyway.

This, for me, puts suffering into perspective.  I will not blame God--that is tantamount to blaming the Allies for World War II, not Hitler and his evil minions.

I will not say God ordained the evil or allowed it--that is tantamount of saying the Allies watched and allowed Hitler free rein, and while they could have stopped him at anytime, they did not. (Yes, I know.  The failure of the US to respond earlier to Hitler proved to be catastrophic--the US could have intervened much earlier but because of the isolationism resulting from World War I, it stayed out only until Pearl Harbor was bombed.  Yes, I know: The US provided the Allies with war materiel before we actually stepped in, but our overwhelming manpower could have made a difference earlier on--a kind of manpower blitzkrieg back on the Nazis before they became so entrenched.)

Don't we have contempt for nations that stand by and do nothing, when evil is released and those nations that could intervene do not?  Why then do we ascribe that same callous lack of intervention to God, all in name of His sovereignty?   

Jesus' mission, to rescue us from sin and death, tells us that our planet needed rescue from those very things:

• "He gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds." (Titus 2:14)

• When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
  
  'Where, O death, is your victory?
  Where, O death, is your sting?'
  
  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
  
  Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Cor. 15:54-58)

I highlighted that last portion to encourage us in these days where suffering seems relentless and loss abounds.   

We have Suffering Servant who stands beside us, and says, "Yes. I know.  I suffered deeply while I was here.  I overcame.  So shall you, because I did and I now live in you."

The Bookends of Suffering: Calvinsim and Prosperity Gospel

I am delving into the matter of suffering.  No one voluntarily enrolls in the School of Job.  We walk past its gate, hoping our name is not called to come in and sit down.  As soon as suffering invades our lives, we are not any different than our founding father of the human race, Adam.  We engage in blame.  Look how Adam and Eve responded to God's inquiry (He knew about them having eaten the fruit on the tree) and how they will not take personal responsibility for their actions:

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Gen. 3:8-13)

Our need to blame is driven by a deep fear: the fear of exposure, a glaring light shining right into our shame.  It's not just the guilt we are feeling--guilt results from knowing that we have done something wrong.  Shame results from believing we are past redemption; no good; worthless and one big mistake.  No one wants to feel that way, so we submerge that shame under blaming someone or something, redirecting that glaring light elsewhere. 

Adam blamed God and Eve:  He gave Eve to him and she was the one handing him the fruit.  Eve, unwilling to stand in the light, blamed the serpent.

Nothing has really changed since that day when God shines His light into our lives and our lies, and we immediately redirect the attention elsewhere.  Adam blamed God.  We blame God.  We reason that because He is in charge of the universe, His hand must be involved in whatever takes place, whether good or bad.  In fact, we even created a theology that if examined carefully, have God aiding and abetting felonies on a truly horrendous scale and quite often.

I have had friends throughout the years who are Calvinists.  I am wary of adhering to any -ist or -ism with a human name in front of it as a theological lens, but I have enjoyed conversing with my friends who are -ists.  

Many years ago a pastor friend of mine loaned me a book on Calvinism, hoping I would see the light.  One sentence struck me like a thunderbolt: The author thanked God he was not born a Hottentot (the beleaguered South Africans whose lives were made miserable by European apartheid), implying that God had ordained him to be white and in control.  I was shocked.

Another friend said to me in all sincerity, speaking of her closet friend who had been raped when she was four, "So-and-so has had a hard time accepting that God had ordained her rape."  What?

So if God is in control, everything that occurs on this planet is ordained by Him.  Rape of children.  The Holocaust.  Name your 20th century genocide.  Serial killings.  The list goes on and one, and in their effort to acknowledge God's sovereignty, such believers step right into Adam's shoes,  placing God at the scene of the crime, and His complicity in it.

One day, I was invited by this friend to a play celebrating Martin Luther and the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.  The play consisted of Luther debating the Pope. (Not historical in fact, but oh well.)  Of course, the pastor as Luther got all the great lines, and the woman's son was the Pope, barely able to stand up under the machine-gun fire responses wrought by Luther. (Kind of an odd morality play to watch in this day and age.)  

After the play was over, as we booed the Pope and clapped for Luther (I refrained), the pastor asked the audience if we had any questions.  I asked him why Luther had descended into a virulent antisemitism in his later years, even to the point of suggesting that Jews should be locked inside their synagogues and burned.  He said that was a regrettable position that Luther had taken.  Hmmm. Later I approached him privately and asked him if he knew about the judensau on many Lutheran churches in Germany, and how there is a debate whether to leave them in tact to teach history, or remove them, due to their highly offensive nature.  He didn't now about them, and when I explained that carved into stone on these churches' wall is a Jew sucking milk from a pig's teat, he looked horrified.  

In this church's effort to celebrate the theology of Calvin and Luther, they had to sneak past history and human suffering very quickly, to get to the intellectually satisfying position that God is in control and ordains everything that happens to us. 

It is very comforting to say, "God willed this."  Or equally say, to the person who is reeling in a tragedy, "God ordained this."  On other words, the fear that our suffering has no meaning and that terrible things happen on this planet randomly, is an abhorrent idea to people who love God and want Him to be in control.  Their fear drives them to ascribe to God culpability for everything, even if it means having Him preside over the rape of a child.    

I am sure some of you will be offended at how much I have reduced Calvinism and Lutheranism. But theology in the seminary is not where the average person lives and breathes, and sweeping dogmatic statements implicating God in criminal behavior needs to be confronted. Yes, both reformers had some good insight into the Bible, but those who have inculcated their views into a daily way of seeing how God works has left me deeply saddened.

But wait!  There's more.  John Piper has identified prosperity gospel as American Christianity's biggest import and is very upset by that.  He feels that it misrepresents the Gospel and when this theology fails, people will move away from God altogether.  I respect him for that.  (Yes, I know he is a Calvinist.  I can still learn from him, even if I disagree with his theological lens.)  The Third World is awash in prosperity gospel preachers, and its appeal is understandable.  The fear your life is ordained, with all of its pain and suffering, is not very appealing, especially when the future looks as bleak as the present.  God's ordaining of your suffering may give it meaning, yes, but in the long run, such a life has little hope in it.  So, what is the answer to suffering?  Instead of placing the responsibility on God, prosperity gospel teachers teach that you haven't yet applied the Laws of Prosperity!  Your suffering comes from your ignorance and now, all you must do is exert your faith and access God's wealth.  Of course, the best way is to tithe money into such a church and God will multiply it over and over for you!  You just need to exert your faith, BOOM! Wealth, health and a prosperous life are yours!

So, according to this theology, your faith is the antidote for suffering.  God ordains, in this theology, a life blessed beyond measure, especially in the material realm, where we live.  So hunger, disease, poverty and suffering are just a big cosmic misunderstanding, and once enlightened, heaven comes down to earth via our faith! 

You may be thinking at this point, Wow, Rhonda, isn't this a bit unfair?  Boiling down a response to suffering as believing either God ordained it or we have the power to change it with our faith--isn't that being a bit reductive? 

No.  I don't think so.  The American church is replete in prosperity theology and our megachurches are awash in its teaching, in some form or another. Many of the Calvinists I have talked to see their theology as a way to strike back at the prosperity gospel, by putting God back on His sovereign throne.  They eagerly want to pull down what they see is presumption parading as faith and toss it in the trash heap.  They agree that God wants our faith, but ultimately, even if we have all the faith in the world, if our child is sick and is going to die, because God wills it, our faith will not have any impact.  The Calvinists revile this faith in faith way of thinking, and the prosperity types don't want a God that doesn't want the best for them in this world, not just in the world to come. 

In this time we are going through, with Covid-19 on the rampage (despite our overwhelming desire to bring back the normal, by not wearing masks and sitting in church) we are faced directly with suffering and we want to cope with it.  Meaninglessness only lasts so long; no one wants to sit and their cosmic lunch alone.  For us to endure suffering in life, we want a meaningful explanation, one that gives us hope and encourages us to face another day.  

I am hoping as we explore suffering, to offer a model that was inspired by a scene in the series, Band of Brothers.  

One of the soldiers, who has driven ahead of the company, is rushing back to tell the sergeant that he needs to come and see something.  The sergeant wants to know what the soldier has seen, but the soldier just can't seem to explain it.  The company pulls up to a barbed wire fence, where gaunt, skeletal men slowly come up to the fence, in stripped uniforms.  The sergeant wants to know what's going on; one of the soldiers, who speaks German, is trying desperately piece together what the inmates are telling him.  More and more people gather and the stench of the camp invades the senses of the soldiers.  They have no idea what they have found, for this is no Geneva Convention guided POW camp; something is horribly wrong, and the Americans who have arrived are completely dumbfounded as to what they are seeing.

We know.  We want to reach in and tell the soldiers this is the real war that Hitler wanted: the utter elimination of the Jewish people.  The D-Day invasion, of which these soldiers have been a part, was only part of the war effort.  But as one soldier realizes, who earlier had been complaining about why they have been fighting so hard, this is why:  to stop this unspeakable evil.  He gets it and at the end, so do we.  This was truly a crusade to stop not just a war but the wholesale slaughter of humanity.

Now, the model that I will be exploring is one of our planet as being one big war zone, with unspeakable evil occurring daily.  The planet was invaded by an evil when Adam and Eve handed it over to the enemy, who had promised them so much and who then gave them a legacy of evil and destruction.  His job, from the moment Adam and Eve took that apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, instead from the Tree of Life (God's wisdom and ways) was to "steal, kill and destroy." (John 10:10)

Jesus stepped into this war zone to retake the planet, one soul at a time.  Suffering is an intrinsic part of war zones.  We will examine how suffering is part of this planet, pure and simple, and the hope is in Jesus and how we follow Him through the chaos.  

Stick with me. 

 

 

Enrolling in the School of Job

Why do people suffer?  This question has rang down the ages like a cry in the dark that will not stop.  Every generation, from Adam and Eve crying over their dead son, Abel, to the survivors of genocide, and everyone in between, have asked that question.  Sometimes, the heavens are silent, as if God wants us to leave a message and the time that we called, and He will get back to us.

It's a legitimate question with no easy answers.  But recently, I have been compelled to ask it and seek those answers.  In fact, it is that very question that drove me into the arms of Jesus.

When I was in the 8th grade, our teacher was on an exchange program with a teacher in Palo Alto, California.  I was living in Hawaii, having moved there a few years earlier from Los Angeles.  This new teacher wanted us to learn about the Holocaust.  This wasn't a new subject to me; my parents talked all the time about the atrocities of World War II.  The movie "Exodus" had a profound effect on them, and how Israel was the only safe place for the Jews.  They mentioned the tortures done to the Jews in the camps; it seemed as if they still couldn't believe something like that could happen on their generation's watch.  But it did and they discussed it with an impressionable young girl, who tried in her imagination to see what has gone on.

Then came this teacher with a movie.  Real images to replace the vague imaginings I had concocted; bodies in pits, closets with heads stacked inside; more pits, and more bodies.  Dismembered body parts, stacked up like cord wood.

This threw me into a deep quest to understand such a horrific event.  I read The Diary of Anne Frank, but that is comfortable history; people hiding, a girl falling in love.  There is no diary that describes what happened to her once she was arrested, deported in a train and died a painful death of typhus in a squalid camp.

I couldn't believe that the God of my Sunday School, and my 50's parents' faith of do the right thing and love America could possibly have overseen such an event without any intervention.  Where was America?  Where were my parents?  Where was God?

I then decided that there could be no God.  Yup.  I declared myself an atheist and had to eat my cosmic lunch alone.  But then it stuck me:  The people who perpetrated such horrors literally got away with murder.  If this earth and its justice system was it, then any kind of justice meted out was paltry in comparison to the enormity of the crime and the numbers of who were involved.

So, I made my way back to God.  Who is He?  Buddhism seemed a good choice, because in Hawaii, that religion is prevalent.  But a quiet individual, seated like a lotus with his eyes closed, seemed too far removed from the heads in the closet.

Then, I pursued Judaism.  I wanted to desperately understand why the Jews had been so mercilessly hunted down and killed.  The God of the Jews was familiar from my Sunday School days; my parents had long stopped going to church, but I remembered the lessons. So, I read every book in our school library about Judaism, Israel and Hitler.  

I desperately wanted to believe that God would comfort the broken lambs and punish the wolves.  What to do?

For a class project, I had to write a biography of a famous person.  A good friend of mine had been telling me about Jesus, and to read the New Testament.  In my wisdom, I declared that the New Testament had been written by Christians, so it was unreliable and biased.  Then came the movie, Jesus Christ Superstar.  Oh wow.  Music and a Jesus who railed against injustice was a potent mix to my searching heart.  Alright then: My biography project would be on Jesus Christ.  But no Bible as a source; I used many books from our school's library.  I wrote a long paper and made a poster of the highlights of His life.  

Now, I faced a conundrum:  I loved Judaism, but this Jew with the fire in his eyes and his call to stand up against evil was far too compelling to ignore.  One night, having laid a Star of David and a cross on my nightstand, I prayed that God would move the one He wanted me to follow.  The room filled with such a warmth and presence that I knew I had met God.  Personally.  Deeply.  I was forever changed.  

My heart's quest had been fulfilled.  I had met the One who had not forgotten this earth, its inhabitants, nor its evil.  He has not been a spectator, but as C.S. Lewis observed, He invaded this planet in the person of His Son, Who, like the troops on D-Day, has been taking back the planet from its evil empire one soul at a time.  

I have been on a quest ever since to reconcile the goodness of God with the immense evil on this planet.  Enroll with me in the School of Job to explore the nature of suffering.  I don't know exactly where we will go, but the Holy Spirit wants us to be bold adventurers and seek truth, no matter where it leads.  

Because, ultimately, a genuine search will lead us back to the One who calls Himself, "Truth."

Will we answer the question of "Why do we suffer?" Maybe yes. Maybe no.  But I have found the one thing such a search brings is a deeper understanding of God, and our relationship to Him.  That alone is worth the journey.

The Best Church Money Can Buy

Let's join Jeremiah in chapter 5 as God gives him an assignment: 

Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, search through her squares.
If you can find but one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city.
Although they say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’ still they are swearing falsely. (5:1-2)

Why Jerusalem?  It contained the megachurch of its day--the Temple--and it was the spiritual power center and focal point of the Jewish people.  It had it all, with lots of leaders who knew the Law and all its intricacies.  King David ruled from here. The spiritual leaders led.  The people followed.  But there was a serious problem.  Truth was not in operation, despite all the appearance to the contrary.  Jerusalem looked spiritual enough, with all the hustle and bustle of religious activity. Solomon spared no expense and this megachurch gave the Jewish people a tremendous sense of pride--after all, this was God's House.  It was alive and well.  Was it?  It was alive, but not well.  Jeremiah was asked to search for truth in His people.  The God argued that no one in His city was honest.  God saw into the people's hearts and despite outward religious behavior, they lacked honesty.  Honesty is integral to God's character; He cannot and will not lie.  Those who call upon His name must reflect His character. Jeremiah responds with a rhetorical question, and then makes an observation: 

Lord, do not your eyes look for truth?  You struck them, but they felt no pain; you crushed them, but they refused correction.  They made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent.  I thought, 'These are only the poor; they are foolish, for they do not know the way of the Lord, the requirements of their God.' (5:3-4) 

He is mystified why, despite all of God's efforts to correct His people, they refuse to repent.  Jeremiah is giving them some latitude, based on their poverty. Solution?  Jeremiah will seek out those at the top and in doing so, confronts a terrible truth: 

So I will go to the leaders and speak to them; surely they know the way of the Lord, the requirements of their God. But with one accord they too had broken off the yoke and torn off the bonds. (5:5)

What "yoke" had been discarded?  What "bonds" had been cast away?  The leaders--with "one accord"--had thrown away truth.  Truth about what?  The prophet Micah put it succinctly: He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)  Those hallmarks of His people were missing.  Why?  Because the leaders had decided that truth had gotten in way of doing great things for God. They might have argued, The Temple is still standing, Jerusalem is still operational, so truth is not necessary to keep a society functioning.  People are being religious and we are still chosen, so let's do what is pragmatic, expedited and popular.  Truth is time-consuming to teach and follow; let's keep the greater good in mind, and if we have to cut corners to do so, well, hey, we are still doing big things for God.

At our core, we are still fallen beings.  Jesus will give us a new heart, but the old sin nature lurks predatorily under the surface.  Paul, in Romans 7, laments this very fact.  Even if we start out sincerely, with our born-anew heart, our prideful self, fed by the Big Time (bigger must be blessed) will eventually take over and destroy us.  God summarizes the Jerusalem leaders well: "for their rebellion is great, and their backslidings many." (5:6) This word "implies repeated apostasy." (NIV Study Bible).  This is not where people make a mistake here and there, or where their sinful nature has kicked in temporarily--it is a repeated departure from the truth, as revealed in God's Word and and as reiterated by His prophets. Reaction?

 

They have lied about the Lord; they said, 'He will do nothing!  No harm will come to us; we will never see sword or famine. The prophets are but wind and the word is not in them; so let what they say be done to them.' (5:12-13)

 

Truth was not being preached.  The consequences for disobedience to the Lord were not being taught.  The prophets were ignored.  Is the modern church in America any different?  Casting Crowns has really captured the modern church in their song, "Start Right Here:"   

We want our coffee in the lobby, we watch our worship on a screen
We got a rockstar preacher, who won't wake us from our dreams
We want out blessings in our pocket, we keep our missions overseas
But for the hurting in our cities, would we even cross the street?

Huh but we wanna see the heart set free and the tyrants kneel
The walls fall down and our land be healed, but church if we want to see a change 

in the world out there, it's got to start right here, it's got to start right now
Lord, I'm starting right here.  Lord, I'm starting right now...

America has the best churches money can buy. Yet we wonder why 2020 has been such a terrible year. 

 

'Among my people are the wicked, who lie in wait like men who snare birds and like those who set traps to catch people. Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek.  Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not seek justice.  They do not promote the case of the fatherless; they do not defend the just cause of the poor. Should I not punish them for this?'  declares the Lord. 'Should I not avenge myself on such a nation as this? A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land:  The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?' (5:26-31)