Eulogy for Wayne Pribbernow

A good friend is hard to find. And painful to lose. I lost one recently. I have had no better friend than Wayne Pribbernow. Over the thirty plus years that I knew him, Wayne proved to be everything one could ask for in a friend. In my estimation, he modeled what a Christian man should be. He loved God’s Word and took every opportunity he could to share it with others. I remember how excited he was to meet with his “lady friends,” as he called them, a group of senior citizens who gathered weekly to hear Wayne teach from the Bible. He was instrumental in keeping the little church near his cottage going, preaching and teaching there when needed as well as volunteering for whatever jobs wanted doing. Wayne also served honorably in many other churches throughout his life.

Speaking of the cottage, that too demonstrated Wayne’s big heart and generous spirit. He told me when he and Sharon first bought it that it was going to be made available to anyone who wanted a chance to get away into the woods. From what I could tell, they made good on that pledge. I was a frequent visitor to the cabin on the lake during deer season especially, but I also retreated there at other times. It became a favorite get-away for my grandson and I as it did for many others. I can still see Wayne sitting at the dining table sipping a cup of coffee with his Bible open before sunup or late in the evening. We had many hours of coffee and conversation over the meaning God’s Word and our responsibilities to live it fully.

I saw another side of Wayne’s commitment to his friends when a mutual friend went through some very difficult times. Wayne lived near the friend, and on more than one occasion he ran to his house, even in the middle of the night sometimes, to sit with him and help him deal with his troubles.

 His helping spirit was also evident in the ministry that he and Sharon offered to families that were working through the trials of blending stepchildren and second spouses into working Christian units. The two girls he and Sharon raised also proved the value of his Christian parenting philosophy. Wayne wasn’t proud of everything from his past, but the remorse he felt at his failures and the joy he found when reconciliation was possible attest to his honest repentance. If children (and grandchildren) are a testimony to their parents, Wayne had plenty to be grateful for in that way.

Wayne truly displayed his unwavering faith in God when talking about his health. He would say, not entirely joking, that he had died several times, but God wouldn’t take him home because there was still work to do here on earth. No matter what he went through including heart problems, cancer and all the things that go with normal aging, Wayne remained true to his belief that God was in control no matter what the circumstances might look like.

I will never forget Wayne and everything he meant to me. It is obvious from the number of comments on Facebook at Wayne’s passing that I am not the only one who appreciated Wayne Pribbernow. Maybe the best compliment I can offer is to say that I would be a better person if I could be more like Wayne. I am so looking forward to that new earth we all have coming so I can get back around that dining table in the cabin and continue our conversations. Keep the pot on, Brother.

Vax or Novax

The Biden administration is being accused of challenging religious freedom. The two issues that have received the most attention are LGBTQ+ and vaccination. (I have already written about the first; see Related posts below.) The demand of the New Testament to obey the mandates of government is crystal clear. Paul and Peter both make unambiguous statements recommending that believers should follow the rules made by their leaders. The only biblical incident in which someone defied the authorities is when Peter and John told the Sanhedrin they would not stop preaching Jesus when told to do so. Their reasoning was that they were compelled to obey God rather than man. This has been generalized over the centuries to mean that unless abiding by a secular law forces the breaking of a divine law, obedience is required.

The question then becomes whether there is a clear biblical concept that supports resistance to COVID vaccination. Like so many modern issues, the vax/no vax debate finds sincere Christians on both sides. Because vaccination is a modern therapy, there is obviously no Bible verse that specifically prohibits it. This leads many believers to take the shot in submission to the authorities as Scripture recommends. These folks often cite other reasons to follow the government request, chief among them is that it represents loving their neighbor by following the protective regimen. Of course, they also feel that it is prudent to guard against illness when possible.

There are, however, plausible reasons to resist the vaccine, some biblical, some otherwise reasonable. The non-biblical resistance stems from the uncertain reliability and questionable safety of the vaccines. I have written extensively on the dubious nature of the government’s claims of safety and efficacy. I have also shown that the death rate for COVID has been wildly overestimated and the actual count of fatalities due specifically to the virus will never be known.

One must also question the reliability of the persons and organizations pushing the vaccines when they are becoming wealthy from their use. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the foremost proponent of universal vaccination, has become the highest paid federal employee in the US, surpassing even the President. We have no way of knowing what Fauci’s investment portfolio might look like, as Representative Jerry Carl pointed out last June. As a bureaucrat rather than elected official, Fauci’s finances are not public. Other individuals such as Bill Gates are making huge “donations” to research into vaccines that will pay large personal dividends when they are put into use. There is a great deal of money being made selling fear across the globe. (For more on the issue of fear see, “The Angel Says: Fear Not”)

This is going to be a weak biblical link, but I am going to suggest it anyway. Christians should not succumb to fear like that which is being propagated by the pro-vax cabal. The Bible clearly teaches that we do not need to fear any man, certainly not to the point of disobeying a Scriptural command. In early 2020 when the true nature of COVID-19 was unknown, churches were ordered to close. Mine did. That most congregations did shut down clearly violates the principle of obeying God rather than man. Once it became clear to thinking people that the threat from the virus was far less dramatic than originally advertised, a return to prudent flu season precautions would have been in order.

Unreasonable fear is also causing people to subject themselves to unproven vaccines which we now know are of limited value in preventing infection from the virus. If the vaccines are effective, why are masks and social distancing still being required in many situations? If the vaccines are effective, why are we hearing regularly about people who are vaccinated becoming infected and even some dying from COVID? If the original vaccines were effective, why are boosters continuing to be added to the requirements? The answer is fear, and the question becomes who benefits from the fear.

The evidence is increasing that the vaccines themselves pose a threat to an individual’s health. Because the major media outlets profit from the exposure that follows the fearmongering, it is difficult to find evidence of the true nature of the treatments being offered as vaccines. If you look outside of the mainstream media, you will find a growing number of physicians and scientists who can prove that the treatments currently being provided are not vaccines by any definition. More disturbing, many sources are claiming that the side-effects of the non-vaccines are quite serious. Following the principle of not putting anything harmful into my body, I think it is reasonable to refuse the vaccine on biblical grounds.

Just as it has done with the LGBTQ+ issue, the progressive factions in government have pushed against the religious interests of American citizens by supporting universal vaccination. While the vaccine mandate has not materialized on a national level for most of us (except for federal employees and members of the military), several cities have been emboldened by the White House’s insistence that it is needed and instituted their own mandates.

I have no quarrel with people who want to be vaccinated or with private institutions or businesses that choose to require vaccination. If proof of vaccination becomes necessary at the places I frequent, I will find other places that have not succumbed to the fear. What I will resist as far as possible is joining the lemmings and blindly leaping off the cliff. I also recommend that all my readers become knowledgeable about the policies of our elected officials and their bureaucratic allies. As I said in “Don’t be a Moron,” we owe that to our Lord and His kingdom on earth.

Related posts: How do you Read Paul; Clobber the Argument; Bake for Them Two; The Uncomfortable Subject; Who is Discriminating?

Read This or Die

As I wrap up another term of teaching Composition to students who don’t really want to be in my classes, I am struck by the numbers who demonstrate their disinterest by open disinclination to do the necessary work. I suspect that some of them are only attempting college because either the government or an employer has tempted them with “free money.” There are doubtless a few who have no intention of completing a degree or program, but simply want to stay enrolled long enough for the stimulus check to clear, after which they withdraw with a partial refund in cash. I call it Cash for Dummies.

This is a cynical outlook, I understand. However, the anecdotal evidence from my peers supports this theory. Soon after the stimulus money began to flow, we marveled at the twenty or thirty percent drop in enrollment after the seventh or eighth week of the term. Many of these withdrawals had done reasonably well up to that point, then they just stopped coming to class. The cloud of befuddlement began to clear from the faculty lounge when we learned that the timing of the drops coincided with the deposit of the last stimulus installment.

This explains some of the attrition, but there are many who remain to the end with little hope of earning a passing grade. Across the disciplines there are reports of students in the final weeks of class struggling with concepts which should have been mastered early in the term. Students who fail elementary quizzes want re-takes. Students who knew they were failing at mid-term come asking what they can do to pass on the last day of class. One student wrote in a late term essay that she was failing Comp for the second time, only now realizing that to pass she would have to work harder.

All this disturbed, saddened and frustrated me personally. Then I saw a news report that highlighted the sickening result of the attitude of my students. A young airman was killed in Iraq during a routine munitions demolition. The operation involved destroying a large number of fragmentation bombs, the anti-personnel type which scatter shrapnel up to two thousand feet. The manual detailing how to dispose of this type of bomb is clearly written. It plainly instructs the operators to set off the demolition in an earthen pit and remain behind barriers far from the blast.

For some reason, the deceased airman was only eight hundred feet away from a surface level blast and not protected by any barrier. He was part of a team who were trained to do the job they were doing. But they did not follow instructions. My guess is that they either ignored the clear directions in the manual, or worse, did not bother to read it at all. These young people have been conditioned by an education system which does not allow negative consequences to get in the way of good self esteem. I see these students in my classes every day. They think they can pass my class without reading the chapters or properly writing the assignments.

Unfortunately the real world assigns consequences to our actions. Ignore the manual for the stamping machine and lose a hand. Disregard the safety measures for connecting that fuel line and experience self-immolation. Discount the warning to stay off the pier in high waves and sleep with the fishes. Overlook the admonition that to befriend the world is to make God an enemy… Ouch. Maybe it isn’t only the world that attaches consequences. My late brother-in-law used to love to say, “When all else fails, read the instructions.” Good advice.

Through the Bible in Seven Minutes

As the year comes to a close, I am at the end of my annual through the Bible reading. I am struck once again by the sheer beauty, consistency and symmetry of the Scripture. Even though it is composed of sixty-six separate books written over the course of more than one thousand years by forty different individuals, it sustains one theme from Genesis to Revelation: God cares for His own. I won’t pretend to know all the reasons why God chose to undertake this project we know as human history – His ways are far above my comprehension – but there is plentiful evidence to support the central theme as it is embodied in the famous verse, “God so loved the world.”

Although Scripture teaches us that God’s love is unconditional, it also makes plain the fact that the measure of God’s favor is dependent on the human response to His love. Some modern Bible interpreters reject the idea that God’s full character includes an element of judgment. Yet, to do this these people must excise entire sections of the Scripture record and ignore scores of passages which in plain language describe the wrath of God which leads to judgment. ( See The Goodness of Wrath)

We only have to read to the third chapter of Genesis to find God executing judgment on His creation. Due to their disobedience, Adam and Eve, our fore parents, are removed from the perfection of the Garden of Eden and left to fend for themselves, more or less, in an environment that is far from perfect. A mere ten generations later, the record reveals that humans had become so despicable in their misbehavior that God passed judgment using a world-wide flood to wipe clean his creation, saving one faithful man and his family by means of the ark. Here too, there is another division when Noah’s son Ham is excommunicated for his transgression leaving the lines of Shem and Japheth to continue.

A few more generations pass when God again must deal with human disobedience at the Tower of Babel, dividing them into groups by giving each a different language. Shortly thereafter, God again chose one man to further His plan, the man called Abram, descendent of Shem. This line is further split assigning chosen status to the progeny of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This line, after growing into a nation we call Israel, then became God’s history lesson. God repeatedly showed His love and favor while continuing to display His wrath when His people disobeyed.

In the desert wanderings, after God lovingly removed Israel from Egyptian bondage, He winnowed out the unbelievers so that His remnant was prepared to conquer the land He had promised Abraham. After the conquest, throughout the period of the judges and kings, God chastised Israel time and again by allowing the surrounding heathen nations to place them in bondage. The low point for Israel was the Babylonian captivity and destruction of Jerusalem with its holy temple in 576 B.C. which seemed to mark the end of God’s favor, but He promised through His prophets that after seventy years they would return. And so they did.

The returned remnant rebuilt the temple and instituted a system of religious observance that sometimes mirrored God’s plan and sometimes mocked it. Then, when the time had fully come, as Paul puts it, God sent the Seed He had promised all the way back at the fall of Adam. The Jews had been looking for the Promised One for centuries. Ironically, when He finally arrived in history, the Jewish religious leaders who should have welcomed Him failed to recognize Him because of their slavish reliance on the human religion they had developed.

God’s plan continued unthwarted as He used the disobedience of His chosen people to complete His perfect plan. The Spotless Lamb of God, pictured for centuries in the Jewish ceremonial sacrifices, was mocked, beaten, and crucified by the very people He came to save. In their recklessness, the Jewish leaders inadvertently brought salvation to all who would believe, and they wrought destruction on their cherished religious charade. The very people who killed their Messiah lived to see Jerusalem utterly destroyed as a judgment for their unbelief.

It was here that the mystery of God, hidden for the ages says Paul, came to light. The Seed that had been promised to Abraham became the Light to the nations spoken of by many of the prophets throughout Israel’s history. The ringing bell of the New Testament sounds the message that the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of the Lord. God brought His Son into the world not just to save humans but to save His entire creation. The hidden mystery is that God will recreate Eden and populate it with the faithful of every generation, nation, tribe, and tongue.

As I finish the year in the book of Revelation, I am reminded that many people today hold to an interpretive scheme for the book that looks for a coming rapture, tribulation and subsequent thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. Most of the people I know who treasure that view are unaware that for about eighteen hundred years, a different interpretation held sway over most of the church. Indeed, many Christians today still believe the ancient message. According to that view, God’s judgment pictured in the book of Revelation was executed in 70 A.D. when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple for the final time. That view rings most true to me as it recognizes the history-changing significance of the Cross of Christ and the finality of the subsequent judgment on the apostate nation of Israel. (See “Why I am a Preterist”)

Whether one holds to the dispensational-millennial view of Revelation that places most of the book in the future or the view that sees all but the last couple chapters as completed history, one thing remains the same for all believers. We can all treasure the fact that God is in control, whether in judgment or in favor, in war or in peace, in tragedy or blessing. That is the ultimate message of the Bible, in my opinion. God loves His creation, and the record given to us in Scripture demonstrates that He is calling a people to Himself. I pray that you may be among the called so that no matter how the last pages of Scripture play out, you will be assured an eternity with God sharing nothing but His favor as the ages roll on.

 

Rain on the Parade

Sorry. If you are big on Santa Claus, I am about to rain on your parade. Looking around our tiny house on Christmas Eve, I am probably the last person who should be critical of those who love the jolly old elf with his bowlful-of-jelly belly. My wife has been collecting Santa figures as long as I have known her. After we moved full-time into an RV, she had to curtail her urges to continue adding to the collection for lack of space to display them. Still, we have 21 figures that I can see from my seat at the computer. To my dismay, there is only one nativity in our collection. In my wife’s defense, and to salve my conscience, most of the characters we have displayed lean toward the original Saint Nicholas legend rather than the elvish one invented in the 19^th century by Clement Clarke Moore.

The legend of Saint Nicholas is by no means a historical certainty. As the story goes, Nicholas was from a wealthy family. After his parents died, he chose to distribute his wealth anonymously to the less fortunate. One of the early versions tells of his nighttime visits to a home over a period of days or even weeks. It was Moore who cemented the gift-giving into Christmas Eve. Some believe he chose Christmas Eve in order to remove the materialism of gifts from the proper spiritual focus on Christ’s birth on Christmas Day. In spite of his attempt, Moore’s poem has done the opposite; Christmas has become he most blatant example of materialism anywhere on the calendar.

I am rereading N. T. Wright’s book Surprised by Hope. His theme in the book is to encourage new thinking about the resurrection of Jesus. Renewed thinking would be more correct, as Wright suggests Christians have lost the true meaning of the resurrection. As evidence of this, Wright points to the fact that the celebration of Christmas has dwarfed the church’s Easter commemoration. While Wright does not discount the importance of understanding Christ’s nativity, he firmly believes that Resurrection Day should be the central event on the Christian calendar.

I agree with Wright. Certainly, there are elements of the nativity that form necessary ground for the eventual culmination of the incarnation. That God should become one of us, born of a virgin to live a perfect human life and move relentlessly to the severe obedience of the cross is essential to understanding the gospel. But it is at the cross where history turns its most significant corner, and Jesus’ subsequent resurrection validates the meaning of His life. We could, I suppose, know nothing of the Savior’s birth and still celebrate His resurrection. But the birth without the resurrection leaves us, as Paul says, most pitiable.

My wife and I watch Miracle on 34^th Street every year at Christmastime. The theme is heart-warming and cannot be faulted as a secular version of a child finding faith in something hard to believe. There are dozens of other Christmas movies, some silly, some serious, that encourage human kindness and selfless giving. There’s nothing wrong with fostering positive traits through drama. I am at a loss, however, to think of one movie that depicts Christmas as the time to remember the Holy Child who became the Holy Savior on the cross of Calvary. Thinking about death at Christmas is kind of a buzz-kill.

Perhaps my favorite character in my wife’s collection is the one I have pictured here. It ignores Moore’s goofy elf and magical reindeer, and it makes me think of the true meaning of Christmas. The ancient Nicholas, long before the Roman Church sainted him, depicts the selfless spirit that should motivate every Christian who understands what the Babe in the manger stands for. Somehow, that fat bearded guy riding a sleigh in the parade fails to do that for me. Sorry Mr. Moore.

Charles Schultz says it best with the words of Linus in the Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon. “‘For behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord…’ That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” Linus nailed it. Christmas is about a Savior, and without His death and resurrection, He would not have been anyone’s savior. If I may borrow from N.T. Wright, the resurrection is what Christmas is all about.

Many years ago, I built a window display that featured a cross standing
in a cradle topped by a crown: cradle, cross and crown. I stole the image from the Bethel Bible Series lesson about the Gospels. Maybe I will try to recreate that for next Christmas. I’ll still let my wife display her Saint Nicholas collection. I have to admit, it gives me good feelings when I look at it. Oh look! The rain is clearing up.

Parental Responsibility

A couple weeks ago there was another school shooting. A fifteen-year-old took a handgun to school in Oxford, Michigan and shot several students and one teacher. Running parallel to the dramatic reporting of the incident was the ongoing search for the boy’s parents who were being sought by police. The parents tried to hide, but they were quickly discovered and arrested. The original charge was involuntary manslaughter. Defending her decision, Karen McDonald, the prosecutor, said, “I wasn't elected to do the safe thing, and this is just far beyond politics. To me, this was the right thing to do. I don't think anyone looking at it … could have decided to just allow those two individuals to move forward in their life and never have any consequences.”

McDonald later told a reporter that she was angry that it’s 2021 and we still have school shootings. I assume she is disturbed by the fact that since the 1999 Columbine shooting, school tragedies continue to take place far to frequently. I’m not sure anger, no matter how well justified, is the best motivation for a public servant of any kind, especially a county prosecutor. The judicial system in this country is supposed to apply the appropriate law to every circumstance in a rational manner apart from emotional considerations.

This is not the first time someone has suggested charging the parents of a school shooter; however, according to McDonald, she is the first to attempt to do it. Involuntary manslaughter is defined as the crime of killing another human being unlawfully but unintentionally. If a parent handed a child a gun and told him to go shoot people, there may be some complicity. In this case, the parents didn’t know their son had taken the gun from the house. The boy acted independently. Unless emotion trumps rational thinking, I cannot imagine a jury applying the legal definition of manslaughter to the parents in this case.

The situation does lead me to ask myself how far parents’ responsibility extends in the life of their children. At what age do children become morally responsible for their actions? Child psychologists have tried to identify a stage of development at which moral responsibility applies; opinions vary, but it is usually put in the early teens. The Bible refers to an age when children can tell the difference between right and wrong, but it does not pin a number on it. Ancient Jewish tradition assigns thirteen as the age when a boy becomes a man, or more precisely, a “son of the covenant,” the definition of bar mitzvah.

In Western society today, there seem to be few thirteen-year-olds who have mastered what psychologists call higher level thinking or formal reasoning. We seem to be pushing adulthood and its responsibilities into the twenties for many young people. That is not to say that apart from a clinical mental deficiency a fifteen-year-old doesn’t know it’s wrong to shoot his schoolmates. Very young children can tell that some things should not be done, even if it is only because they know it will displease their parents and possibly result in punishment for them. This does not necessarily mean they know right from wrong in the abstract, however.

Parents can either help their children mature morally, or they can impede them. The Oxford shooter’s mother seems to be in the latter category. When her son was caught using his cell phone against school policy, she texted, “LOL I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught.” Supporting rule-breaking does not qualify as good parenting, but I don’t think it rises to the level of involuntary manslaughter. The father of the shooter seems to have been a bit more rational. When he heard of the shooting on the radio, he rushed home to see if the gun they had purchased for their son was there. When he discovered it was missing, he phoned the police to tell them his son might be the shooter. That must have been painful, but it shows a sense of responsibility not apparent in his wife.

The young man had scribbled violent images and disturbing phrases in class that day, and the parents were called in to discuss disciplinary measures. They decided not to take their son out of school, and the school administration allowed him to stay. At that point, I believe (as a former school principal) that both the parents and the school were making a mistake. The suggestion to take him home and seek counselling should have been insisted upon. The school officials made the right suggestion even though they didn’t know about the recent gun purchase, but the parents did, and the father apparently had his suspicions. If there is blame to be shared for the ensuing tragedy, there is plenty to go around.

The Bible gives little precise information about when a child stands independently before God. At age twelve, Jesus seemed to know where He belonged to the surprise of His parents.  During His ministry, Jesus praised the faith of children and encouraged adults to copy their simple faith. When the Sanhedrin questioned the parents of the blind man Jesus healed, they deferred to him saying he was on his own. While there is no exact “age of accountability,” as it has sometimes been called, Scripture clearly teaches that at some point in time, people become responsible for their own actions.

I don’t think the Oxford parents should be charged with a crime, but I do think they may have failed to teach their son to properly discern right from wrong. The often-quoted proverb says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” If parents raise their children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” as the New Testament prescribes, they can hope their children will mature into morally responsible adults. If parents choose the path the Oxford mother seems to have chosen, the outcome may be disastrous. Whatever the parents do, the child becomes an adult at some point, and at that point, the parents should not be charged with any crime except poor parenting. As far as I know, that crime is not in the books in Oxford or anywhere else.

There is a larger issue beneath this tragedy that none of the media coverage has broached. Ever since the 1960’s, children have been taught by government schools that morality is relative. “Values clarification” leads them to believe they are the arbiters of what’s right and what’s wrong. Common decency would seem to dictate that killing another human being is wrong in any value system, but like common sense, decency has become less and less common in our society. It is no simple coincidence that at the same time the Bible and prayer were removed from government schools, students attending those schools eventually became morally deficient.

The New Testament is peppered with prophecies that in the last days, people would turn away from God and moral degeneration would be the result. In Romans, Ephesians, Timothy and elsewhere, Paul specifically warned that those who reject God would be left to wallow in their own decadent ways. What began as seemingly benign political correctness in the late 2000’s has morphed into the militant WOKE culture that is attacking traditional Judeo-Christian morality on every front.

I pray that the backlash against critical race theory and other elements of the WOKE agenda will prevail. Parents across the country are telling their local school boards that they are not happy with the current school policies and curricula. America’s founding fathers wisely noted that without a moral populace, government of, by and for the people would fail. It is every parent’s responsibility to see that sound moral teaching is provided for their children in their home and in their schools. The multiple tragedies from Columbine to Oxford should be enough to motivate anyone.

Related posts: I Pray for America; Truth Dysphoria; Critical Race Theory; Woke TV; True Lies

Peace on Earth This Christmas?

Each year I read through the Bible in a different version. This year I am reading the New Century Version. It is a very modern attempt at translation which sometimes gets a little loose with the original text, but I often like the way it puts things. This morning I had to chuckle at their version of 1 Peter 2:15. “It is God’s desire that by doing good you should stop foolish people from saying stupid things about you.” The Greek word (ἀγνωσία) translated “stupid” here is generally transliterated into English as “ignorant.” It literally means “not knowing.” This perfectly describes people who don’t know God or accept His ways. Paul explains their problem in Ephesians 4:18 saying they walk, “in the futility of their mind, being darkened in understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them.”  (For more see: How Can They Think That?)

The Holy Spirit doubled down on the lesson with my daily reading from Charles Spurgeon. The verse Spurgeon drew from was Revelation 12:7 which describes the archangel Michael fighting against the dragon, aka Satan. Spurgeon advises, “The duty of every soldier in the army of the Lord is daily, with all his heart, and soul, and strength, to fight against the dragon.” I agree wholeheartedly. However, sometimes when we are engaged in that fight, foolish people are going to say stupid things about us. Those same people may cause us trouble. Peter advises, “A person might have to suffer even when it is unfair…. But if you suffer for doing good, and you are patient, then God is pleased.

Spurgeon continues the lesson: “We are foolish to expect to serve God without opposition: the more zealous we are, the more sure are we to be assailed by the [loyal followers] of hell…. War rages all around, and to dream of peace is dangerous and futile.” But I do dream of peace. Peace on earth was promised to men of good will outside Bethlehem by the same angels who are fighting against the dragon. Apparently, I need to adjust my personal definition of peace. According to Peter, Paul, and Charles, it doesn’t mean that I won’t have difficulties with “foolish people.” That makes sense if you realize that they are the same ones whom Paul said were living in the “futility” of their minds.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, He restated the promise of the angels on the night of His birth: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you—not as the world gives, I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled.” The peace He promised is to be in our untroubled hearts, not in the world or its circumstances. Later that same evening, Jesus repeated His promise: “I have said these things to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have affliction, but have courage! I have conquered the world.” The Greek word Jesus used for “affliction” (θλῖψις) means pressure or distress.

Paul uses the same root word as Jesus to describe his circumstances to theCorinthians: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” The word “pressed” is how they described what you do to grapes to get wine: you pressure them. If you will allow me to press the metaphor, the good wine we get from our pressure is the fruit of righteousness. The early disciples considered it an honor to be worthy to suffer for Christ. They apparently agreed with James that we should rejoice in tribulation. Our peace is found in knowing why we are suffering.

We can also find peace in knowing how the war we are fighting ends. Spurgeon’s devotional closed with this: “Glory be to God; we know the end of the war. The great dragon shall be cast out and forever destroyed, while Jesus and they who are with him shall receive the crown. Let us sharpen our swords to-night and pray the Holy Spirit to nerve our arms for the conflict. Never battle so important, never crown so glorious. Every man to his post, ye warriors of the cross, and may the Lord tread Satan under your feet shortly!” Amen. And may you find God’s peace this Christmas.

Why Not Try Socialism?

An interesting post appeared on Facebook today. It presented what appeared to be an editorial from a newspaper of some kind. The article alleged that a college professor, frustrated by her students’ belief that a socialistic form of government would be beneficial, decided to perform an experiment with them. She offered to average all test grades and give each student the same grade. On the first test, some students still studied hard, but many studied little. The average for the class was a B. This pleased the ones who hadn’t put in much effort but displeased the ones who had studied hard. Of course.

On the second test, the class average was a D because those who had been studying saw little reason to put in any great effort, and those who had studied only a little studied even less. By the third test, the class average was an F. The professor allegedly failed the entire class. (At this point I doubt the veracity of the story because if true, the professor would almost certainly have gotten herself terminated.) I commented on Facebook that I wish I had thought of this when I was teaching. I had the same frustration with young people who had no idea how socialism really worked or that it has failed everywhere it has been tried.

One of my friends on Facebook suggested that this “fable,” as he called it, represents a straw man fallacy. I looked up a definition: “A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be ‘attacking a straw man.’" For this to be a fallacy then, the professor’s argument, in this case by demonstration, would have to be false. I don’t think it is. The goal of socialism is equal outcomes for everyone. The professor’s experiment accomplished this. I think her “argument” was that in the beginning, lazy people love socialism, but in the end, no one likes it.

The other aspect of a straw man fallacy is that it doesn’t address or refute the subject of the argument. In this case, it seems that the subject of the argument was whether socialism is a beneficial form of government for all citizens in a society. The professor’s experiment demonstrated clearly that one of the main tenets of socialism, equality of outcomes, will ultimately bring about the collapse of society. If we replace the professor’s grade averaging with income and opportunity averaging, we have only to look at the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, or any other country that has tried socialistic policies to see what happens. When was the last time you read a story about hordes of people trying to get into Cuba or Venezuela to enjoy the benefits of socialism?

I think the main problem with socialism is completely ignored by most supporters. As pointed out in the article on Facebook, the government cannot give its citizens anything that it hasn’t taken from other citizens. The government does not make money; it takes money. The only source of income for the federal government is taxes and fees taken from the citizenry. I struggled to make my college freshmen understand that. They wanted the “free” college education that Bernie Sanders was campaigning for. They wanted “free” health care. I told them I would be retiring soon, and I would be sending them the bill for my “free” health care; I asked if they would mind paying. They soundly refused. I gave them the bad news: they would be paying because Medicare would be their responsibility and my benefit. I think some of them got the point. (For a great summary read “Why Socialism Always Fails.”)

Where is Heaven in this argument? Just this: Paul told the Thessalonians, “Anyone does not work neither shall he eat.” The Proverbs are full of admonishments to work for what one needs and discouragements toward those who are lazy. There is also throughout the Scripture the concept of those who have material goods helping those who do not. My contention is that this is meant to be a personal, faith-based type of assistance, not a government handout.

In my view, it is the church’s responsibility to help the poor; it is the government’s responsibility to maintain a level playing field so that everyone has the opportunity to be successful. The minute the government steps into the field of welfare for its citizens, problems are inevitable. Besides the fact that fraud is an automatic result because of man’s sinful nature, an attitude of entitlement soon drives large numbers of people who could support themselves to seek the “free” money. I quote Adrian Rogers, “When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation.”

Also, I won’t claim a direct cause-effect relationship, but I see a definite correlation between socialism and suppression of religious freedom. This may only be a coincidence, but it stands to reason that the enemy of our souls would get behind any form of human government that so nicely feeds our human weaknesses. I agree with the supposition of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters that the enemy will do whatever possible to make humans miserable. Socialism has proven very effective at that chore.

Several years ago, I wrote “Obama Isn't the Problem” to highlight the issue of Americans, especially the young, being receptive to policies that lean toward socialism. That post has been one of the most widely read of all my articles. I am weighing in again because it is evident that the real problem still exists. I have made my political position clear on numerous occasions, but I must say that while the Democrat party is more supportive of policies that are socialistic, an increasing number of Republicans are sliding down the slippery slope. I understand; it is hard to resist the temptation to garner votes by offering “free” stuff to the electorate. I just wish there was a stronger pull in Washington to get back to the principles of industry and personal responsibility that were at the core of our nation’s original success. Principles which are, by the way, biblically supported.

The Knowledge of Good and Evil

Someone has said that every major doctrine taught in Scripture can be found in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Without question, the roots of human frailty are found there. Genesis three is the pivotal point where humankind goes from innocence to depravity. Let me begin by saying that I believe we must understand the Garden of Eden as a real place and Adam and Eve as historical persons. It seems to me that if we make the garden story an allegory, we are forced by logic to discount the historicity of much of what follows in Scripture, including the literal incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. In the Gospels, Jesus Himself alludes to the Genesis account as a real event as does Paul on numerous occasions. We can still learn from an allegory, but in this case, I believe we lose too much if we put the fall of humankind in that category of literature.

That said, I have been thinking recently about the meaning of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God spoke its name and the prohibition against eating from its fruit in Genesis two. In the next chapter, the serpent, later revealed as the devil himself, repeats the “good and evil” pairing, although he deceptively raises questions as to the real results of eating the fruit. I am satisfied that most readers of Scripture have a decent understanding of what good means. Where I think we need to dig deeper is into the meaning of evil.

When we think of the word evil, we generally go toward synonyms like sin, wickedness, and bad behavior. While these are not incorrect meanings of the original Hebrew word, it has a broader sense that does not necessarily imply unrighteousness. I first discovered the wider meaning of the word often translated from Hebrew as “evil” when studying Isaiah in Bible college. I wrote a paper based on Isaiah 45:7 called “Creator of Evil.” Since we know God is holy and cannot be involved in any way in anything sinful, the verse bothered me. I learned that the word Isaiah used can mean distress, calamity, or unpleasantness. With that in mind, it seems clear that Isaiah was quoting God as saying that He brought about calamity to chastise Israel and bring them back to faith in Him.

If we see the tree in the garden as the bearer of distress, calamity or unpleasantness it puts the story in a different light. Add to this the fact that the word used for knowledge in the Hebrew text carries the idea of intimate, experiential knowing. (The word is used in the next chapter to say that Adam “knew” Eve and children were the result. That’s intimate knowledge.) Together this reveals that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden because it would cast the eaters into distress, calamity, and unpleasantness. God was trying to protect His family from that. No doubt, it was also a way of testing them to see if they would remain obedient. Without many such tests, obedience would be robotic and invalidate the idea of humans choosing to obey God of their own free will.

Seen in this way, I think we can learn some valuable lessons. First, God’s prohibition was protective. He wanted to keep Adam and Eve from the dire consequences of failing to obey His commands. It is not as if God was trying to keep them from having a moral sense; that would necessarily have been part of their created nature as imagers of God. They would need to know right from wrong from the beginning, or else they couldn’t be held accountable for disobedience. Note also that the devil used the same illegitimate desire that brought about his demise: you can be like God. The enemy was steering Eve away from the idea of right and wrong by tempting her to want the forbidden fruit. She had to have a moral sense to know that she was supposed to obey God’s commands. The devil was able to distract her by focusing on her desires.

Another lesson we learn here that seems self-evident but is too often ignored is that failure to follow the rules has inevitable consequences. Even true believers will sometimes go out of bounds and use euphemisms like coloring outside the lines or sowing wild oats. What they fail to realize is that coloring outside the lines ruins the picture and wild oats will eventually contaminate the good crop making it difficult to harvest. The sinful nature we all inherited from Adam is all too evident as Paul points out in Romans six and seven. Doing the right thing is made difficult if not impossible when we focus on our desires.

The good news is what Paul recites in Romans eight. We are no longer bound by the sinful nature of Adam if we are in Christ. “Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.” (Romans 8:10 CSB) Whereas Adam made all humanity subject to the ravages of the knowledge of good and evil, Christ’s work on the cross removes us from the family of Adam and adopts us into the family of God. “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!” The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ.” (Romans 8:15-17 CSB)

Another important lesson we can draw from thinking about good and evil beyond the strictly moral meaning is that even though believers are righteous in Christ, we still have a responsibility to use our spiritual senses to discern between right and wrong. The writer of Hebrews says, “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have trained their faculties for the distinguishing of both good and evil.” Among the many synonyms the Greek lexicon gives for good and evil (καλου and κακου), there is one for each that stand out in this context. Good can mean “such as it ought to be,” and evil can mean “not what it ought to be.” Mature believers are called to see things as they “ought to be,” fitting nicely with the idea that sin is anything that is “not what it ought to be.” Righteousness brings order (ought) and anything else brings chaos (ought not).

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they left behind “what ought to be” and plunged humanity into “what ought not to be.” So, with this “knowledge,” it is easy to see how our purpose on earth is to help return things to what they were originally intended to be – what they ought to be. This means Christ as king and His followers as obedient subjects. “Bringing the Kingdom” means reestablishing the rule of God over His creation: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This will not be fully accomplished until Christ’s return at the end of the age, but we are called to make preparations now for that glorious future day.

Now you have the knowledge; wisdom is knowing what to do with it. And getting to it.

Related posts: The God of Demonstrations; Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing; Christian Responsibility; Digging Trenches

Friendship With the World

I recently wrote an article called “Crown of Thorns” that suggested following Christ could very well put believers in some thorny situations. If we use the life of the Apostle Paul as an example, it quickly becomes evident that trouble may be on the itinerary quite regularly. Church history confirms the unbroken chain of persecuted believers right up to the present day. Perhaps because America was founded in large part by people who were fleeing persecution for their faith, the founders designed a system that gave a measure of religious freedom. Except for a few sectarian squabbles, American Christians have not had to deal with harassment or oppression because of their religion.

Freedom from persecution may have inadvertently become the fertile soil that allowed the prosperity gospel to take such firm root in some American churches. Even churches that don’t subscribe to health and wealth preaching have fallen prey to the false teaching that Jesus wants His followers to be comfortable; the warm fuzzy gospel is preached far too often. I believe that Jesus is more concerned with our character than our comfort. Character is more likely to be improved by hard times than easy days. Note that the Bible lists positive traits as the result of trials (James 1:2-4; 1 Peter 1:6-7; Romans 5:3-5)

So, I should not have been surprised when Charles Spurgeon’s devotional the other today recommended patient acceptance of trials. He used the earthly experience of Jesus, our exemplar, to make his point. I would paraphrase the early verses of John’s gospel to say Jesus came into the world He created and the very people He came to save rejected Him completely. Of course, there were those who did receive the Savior: the blind who could see; the lame who could walk; the possessed who were set free. But the Jewish religious leaders almost all rejected His messiahship.

The different factions that made up the leadership each had their own reasons for refusing to believe the Man from Nazareth was the Messiah. The Herodians were in love with power; the Sadducees had developed a listless, secular faith; and the Pharisees were only concerned with outward things. In each case, the underlying problem was worldliness. They were more concerned with the things of this world than the other-worldly things Jesus emphasized. The predominant first century expectation of Messiah was that He would be a military leader who would drive out the Roman occupiers and reestablish an earthly kingdom in which their worldly wishes could be fulfilled.

That mentality is not too far from what many American Christians seem to want. Live like the world but paint it over with a thin coat of religiosity. A friend of mine was recently challenged by the accusation that she was only a “surface Christian.” She received the chastisement as righteous and has made a real effort to let her Christianity soak deep into her life. I am reminded of the contrast that was emphasized in my seminary training for Christian school administrators: a teacher who is a Christian is not the same as a Christian teacher. Likewise, a businessman who is a Christian is not necessarily a Christian businessman. Whether teaching, running a business or any other earthly pursuit, to be truly Christian, everything must be held up to biblical inspection.

Being a surface Christian is almost an oxymoron. If one’s belief does not reach the core of one’s being, it is doubtful that it is the kind of faith that will win the crown. The tragic irony is that there are many preachers who don’t preach Christianly. One seldom hears the call to be in but not of the world. Even less often does one hear worldly behaviors called sin. If the people who sit in church on Sunday are no different Monday through Saturday than the people who don’t go to church, there is a serious disconnect from the biblical description of what it means to be a Christian. If the preachers aren’t hammering that home, it is not sincere Christian preaching.

James said that friendship with the world is enmity with God. Paul cautioned the Roman believers against worldly thinking. Being the center of Western earthly power, it is not hard to imagine the Christians in Rome wanting to cozy up to the worldly powers in hopes that they might gain something. Paul’s message was that they had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Similarly, American Christians live in the richest, most powerful nation on earth. Worldly temptations surround us. Virtually every media source hammers us with the call to partake of earthly pleasures; the siren call is nearly impossible to ignore.

I don’t think the enemy of our souls tempts many believers to outright wickedness. It is enough that he can draw us into thinking that good things of the earth are blessings from God to be enjoyed with no restraint. Paul does say that God provides us all things richly for enjoyment, but look at the larger context: “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be proud and not to put their hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in God, who provides us all things richly for enjoyment, to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, sharing freely, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the future, in order that they may take hold of what is truly life.”

That which is truly life, the eternal life in God’s presence is not to be found in friendship with the world and its riches. The purpose of God’s rich blessing is to do good with our earthly wealth and store up heavenly treasures that last forever. Many American Christians have failed to notice Jesus’ warning that one cannot serve both God and mammon. I get a mixed message from multi-million-dollar church buildings with annual mission budgets that wouldn’t buy one of the shiny new expensive cars that fill the lot on Sunday morning.

In His earthly ministry, Jesus had much to say about our relationship with the world. The world was certainly not His friend, and if we would be Jesus’ friend, must look closely at our other friendships. We all need to do a heart test. Jesus said where your treasure (friendship) is, there also is your heart. Where is your heart?

Related posts: Abraham’s Promises – Solomon’s Rules; The Country Club Church; Merely Christian; The Church Cannot Save the Lost 

Why Heaven Matters

When I began writing this blog over a decade ago, I named it WHAMM for the cutesy sound of the name, but I also had something more serious in mind. In answering the title question, why heaven always matters most, I was playing off the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” As I have said many times, but especially in “Bringing the Kingdom,” it is the Christian’s responsibility to help make that prayer a reality. Earth is to be recreated in heaven’s image.

For most of my life I have believed the almost universal teaching that Heaven is where Christians go to spend eternity when they die. Two authors who have been added to my bookshelf recently have caused me to reexamine what the Bible actually says about Heaven. The first author who sparked my interest was Michael S. Heiser who wrote Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. One of Heiser’s main themes is that many of our modern ideas about the Bible are based on inferior translations of the Scripture and the theology that has grown from those translations. As a preeminent scholar of Hebrew and other ancient Mid-Eastern languages, Heiser offers the modern reader a more accurate impression of what the original authors were saying.

By providing a clearer reading of certain texts that have puzzled scholars for years, Heiser unveils a consistent theme that runs from Genesis to Revelation. For me, the most significant result of Heiser’s clarifications has been related to the overall plan of God, and how He intends to carry out the final chapter of the redemption story. Naturally, Heaven is a part of that story. Heiser helped me to see that it was never God’s plan to call a people to Himself so He could bring them to Heaven. God’s original plan was to have Adam and Eve fill the earth with their offspring and turn it everywhere into a beautiful garden. When they rebelled, God set in motion His redemption plan which would eventually finish what He started.

The second author who got me thinking about what the Bible says about Heaven is N.T. Wright. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, Wright pointedly says that the majority of Christians have misunderstood what the Bible teaches about Heaven. He says, “It comes as something as a shock, in fact, when people are told… that there is very little in the Bible about ‘going to heaven when you die.’” Wright continues, “The medieval pictures of heaven… have exercised a huge influence on Western Christian imagination. Many Christians assume that whenever the New Testament speaks of heaven it refers to the place to which the saved will go after death.” Wright suggests that when Jesus talks about entering the kingdom of heaven people assume He was talking about where you go when you die, “which is certainly not what either Jesus or Matthew had in mind.”

After making a sound argument that the kingdom of heaven Jesus spoke of is something the Savior initiated with his resurrection, Wright proceeds to suggest that the surprising hope his title refers to is the hope of a resurrection for all believers – a bodily resurrection which fits the faithful for an eternity on the recreated earth. Among many passages that expose this reality, Wright points to Romans 8:19-22 which plainly states that all of God’s creation is looking forward to the time when Eden is restored. The author makes a strong argument for the need to look forward to a bodily resurrection.

The question then becomes what heaven is if not the eternal destination of Christians. Wright believes it is a “place,” if it can be called place, where Christians wait for the recreation of Earth at the end of time. The idea of a paradise where the dead may go is supported by Jesus’ word to the thief on the next cross: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Paul also believed that upon his death he would be in Christ’s presence: “absent from the body is present with the Lord.” So, while Wright doesn’t deny the existence of heaven, he dismisses the false idea that it is the place where believers go to join the angels sitting on puffy clouds playing harps for eternity.

I suspect that Wright may be picturing heaven as it is portrayed in the Scripture, but I wonder if there may be a degree of condescension by God to a level of human understanding. I believe that because we have limited ability to understand the details of God’s program, He uses imagery that suits the intellectual capabilities of His creatures but does not necessarily reveal the whole picture. This was certainly the case with the Old Testament sacrificial system. The symbolic attire of the priests, the specific layout of the temple, and the blood sacrifices themselves all spoke of a deeper reality. The writer of Hebrews says that the old system was patterned after the true tabernacle which is in “heaven.” The exact nature of that heavenly reality is still something of a mystery.

In the matter of what happens when we die, I wonder if our problems stem partly from a mindset that is in bondage to time. We suppose that there must be a passage of time between when we die and when the new earth is presented. Ever since Einstein, we have known that time and space are inseparably linked – the so-called time-space continuum. Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians 15 that our corruptible, time-bound bodies will be exchanged for something entirely different when we die. Perhaps part of the difference is that we are no longer bound by time. If that is the case, there may not be any need for a passage of earthly time while we wait for the new creation.

What I am suggesting may sound too mystical or metaphysical for some. But I would argue that heaven is in fact mystical or properly put, supernatural. Heiser prompts us to see the supernatural aspects of all the Scripture. Wright makes us realize that our hope in resurrection is for a “physical” body, yet we know it will be different – supernatural – in some elemental way. My purpose is not to disregard heaven but to highlight why our concept of heaven matters (most). The last section of Wright’s book offers suggestions for how the ministry of the church should be impacted by the correct understanding of the hope of resurrection. If earth is our forever home as he suggests, then he is right to say that the believers’ primary task is to make earth ready for the coming new age in any way we can. So, my title still stands: heaven does matter most.

Related posts: The Heiser Effect; E=MC² in Genesis; Einstein Predicts the Existence of God; Lies We Have Been Told;  Why Wait

Losing the Boundary Stones

I am an almost compulsive saver. If there are screws or fittings left over after an assembly project, I save them. If I have a few inches of a board left after building something, I save it. For years I saved all the essays I wrote in Bible college and seminary. Long after I switched to digital research methods, I saved the texts and commentaries I had collected over the years. All the snapshots of family events from the years before digital photography were sorted and saved in two file boxes.

Occasionally, I would throw something away if it had sat unused for decades, but inevitably, I would need that very object within days of discarding it. My wife and I have downsized several times in the later years of our fifty together. When we chose to move full-time into a travel trailer, storage units became necessary to hold the things we couldn’t bear to part with. Our rationale was that we would probably get off the road and move back into a house, and therefore we would need the things we had stored. We spent more on storage than it would have cost to replace all the stored items.

Before our most recent move back into a trailer, we discarded another batch of saved items. We have a small shed on our lot that is less than half full of things that won’t fit in the trailer. The snapshots I mentioned were among the few things we did keep. Until last week. We did another purge and after all this time we finally decided to dump the family photos. Then yesterday I came across a few items that were my fathers from the time he was in the service in WWII. I didn’t remember that I had them, but they surfaced in our ongoing sort-and-toss operation. His military ID, some high school report cards, and a tiny Michigan State banner were the most touching.

Among my dad’s things, I also found an address book from that era with names of people he knew at the time. Two different addresses for his mother and father may have confirmed a rumor I had heard that Grandma and Grandpa went through a “rough patch” in their marriage. Indeed. This got me thinking about all the things I don’t know about my parents, let alone their parents. Then I thought about my kids. Having come of age in the digital era, they will have the advantage of the Internet, social media, and sites like Ancestry.com if they want to track their family history. Maybe that’s why they declined our offer to give them their photos from our snapshot collection.

I had a moment of dread this morning as I lay thinking about having trashed all those photo memories. I can’t help but wonder if my kids will ever wish they had the faded records of family vacations, holidays, and everyday events that now lie buried in some Arizona landfill. I wonder if the lack of concern for family history is a symptom of the lack of interest in history in general. The old saying is that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. It is also true that they are denied some human insight.

An interest in history often leads to a respect for the people who lived that history. I wish now I had learned more about my parents when they were alive. The things they lived through before I was born made them what they were. They had far different histories than mine, their having experienced the Depression, a world war, and the spread of communism. My mom emigrated from England as an infant and spent years homesteading on the vast Canadian plains. My dad meanwhile struggled to find work until the War Department called him up. They met at a community theater production in Windsor, Canada and married just before the war. Dad spent WWII navigating DC-3’s over thousands of miles of empty ocean using a compass, and map, and a pair of dividers. Mom spent the war years raising their first child while living with her mother-in-law. Six years and three pregnancies (one miscarriage) after the war, I popped onto the scene clueless as to what I had missed.

Here’s the point of all this sentimental reminiscence. It is important for not just families but entire cultures to remain in touch with their past. Throughout the Bible, first Israel and then the church are commanded to remember their past deeds and misdeeds. They are called to remember the faithfulness of the God who is the God of history. There is a Proverb that says, “Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors.” In a literal sense it refers to property boundaries, but there is a wider sense in which it can apply to any type of boundary. In baptism and the Lord’s Supper we remember the boundaries that were redrawn with the death and resurrection of our Savior. The Scripture is full of “ancient boundaries” that give direction to our lives. When we remove those boundary stones, life devolves into chaos.

We must never lose our sense of history. In a sense, we are an amalgam of all the experiences we have had. Certainly, one can rise above damaging circumstances and make a new start, as we witnessed many times in our work with recovering addicts and ex-offenders. Likewise, a country can move beyond the painful realities of past missteps. Neither a person nor a country should try to rewrite their past or deny it. To mix my metaphors, we can use the ancient stones as a lesson and the foundation for a better life. Whatever we do, we don’t want to lose the boundary stones.

That’s Not God

I am going to present some things that people believe are God but are not God. First there is the belief that when something terrible happens it is God’s fault. That is not God. Most of the death and disaster that people blame God for are just the result of living in a fallen world. When Adam and Eve turned their backs on God, they were not the only ones to be cursed; the earth itself was affected. The “thorns and thistles” were just the tip of the ecological iceberg that resulted from the humans’ failure. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes would never have occurred in Eden. The curse also affected human relations as we see very quickly demonstrated when Cain murdered Abel. The devolution of people into wickedness before the flood in Genesis 9 shows how completely the original sin permeated the race.

Some people believe that one religion is as good as another: all roads lead to God. That’s not God. The ancient Eastern mysticism that is repackaged in the New Age thinking of today imagines god is everything and everything is god. It is true that God created everything and is everywhere present to His creation, but He is both separate and transcendent from what He made. When pantheists deny the personal nature of the Creator, they wade into the murky waters of a self-created god who is, in fact, the arch-enemy of the one true God. There is a pantheon of not-gods imagined by men throughout history: Zeus, Thor, Allah, Krishna all recommending paths that lead not to God but to death.

Most self-proclaimed atheists conjure up a god they can refuse to believe in. That’s not God. The downward spiral of their deception is explained by Paul in Ephesians 4: “This therefore I say and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the Gentiles walk: in the futility of their mind, being darkened in understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, who, becoming callous, gave themselves over to licentiousness, for the pursuit of all uncleanness in greediness.” It is ironic that some highly intelligent people fall into this trap, but it points to the truth that the God of the Bible is apprehended by one’s spirit and not through “the futility of [the] mind.”

Some people think that God is an all-forgiving grandfatherly type sitting on a big throne somewhere in the sky just waiting to welcome His prodigal children home. That’s not God. It is true that the Apostle John said God is love, but what some people seem to ignore is that in the same epistle, John warns believers to walk in the light lest they fall in league with the devil. Unless you can make yourself believe that God will forgive the devil, you don’t want to be in his league. The theme of God’s wrath poured out against sin is demonstrated or stated in almost every book of the Bible. To ignore God’s holy judgment and focus solely on love is wishful thinking at best and a pernicious lie at worst.

Finally, there are people who call themselves Christians, who claim to believe in the God of the Bible, who think their God is going to let them into His Heaven because of their good works. That’s not God. I have written before about my experience some years ago canvassing our church neighborhood with the Evangelism Explosion approach. We asked, “If you died tonight, why should God let you into Heaven?” I was shocked by the number of Bible believing, church attending people who said, “I have been good.” I think the explanation for this misunderstanding of clear biblical teaching is that instead of seeing humans made in the image of God, some tend to make God in the image of humans. I had someone tell me recently that he couldn’t imagine a God who didn’t behave like a proper human father. That’s reversing the image concept.

Without getting into the deep weeds of God’s foreknowledge or human predestination, it is enough to say that if we think we can fully understand the God who made in us in His image, that god is too small to be the God of the Bible. Pure grace, the grace of God, is something little understood and seldom practiced by mere humans. It is hard for people steeped in the idea of fairness to grasp the depth of what Paul told the Ephesians: “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast.”

The same mindset that causes people to misunderstand who God is affects their idea of what a Christian is. Many think Christians are supposed to be perfect; that’s not biblical thinking. Nor would I say, as if to forgive my shortcomings, that I am “just a sinner saved by grace.” Rather I would say that I am a saint living by grace, washed in Jesus’ blood, buried into His death, and risen to walk daily in His robe of righteousness. I might agree with the bumper sticker that proclaims, “I am not perfect – just forgiven.” In those moments when I walk in the light as John recommends, that’s not me. That’s God.

Related posts: Answering Rob Bell; The Goodness of Wrath; The Goodness of God When Trouble Comes; The Winnowing Fork of God; Lies We Have Been Told

Crown of Thorns

 Like most Christians in America, I have had a pretty easy time. The troubles I had in the past were often caused by my own ignorance or immaturity. (See OMG! It’s Me) I have certainly not suffered anything for my faith like many of our brothers and sisters around the world. A number of circumstances in the last year or two have made me evaluate my progress toward becoming more like Christ as we are commanded to do. WWJD is still a relevant question.

One of the more difficult traits Jesus demonstrated was the ability to perfectly fulfill His Father’s purpose for His life. Even though Jesus is described as meek and humble, He did not run away from confrontation or compromise when His detractors pressured Him. He ultimately stood before the Sanhedrin and took their abuse, after which He bore the worst the Romans had to offer by enduring flogging and finally crucifixion. Before He was subjected to the final insults by the civil and religious leaders, He had made some cryptic statements to His disciples that were made painfully clear by His obedience “to the point of death.” Legend says that each of the disciples except for John met a similar end as a result of their obedience.

When Jesus said His disciples would necessarily take up a cross to follow Him, it was more than a nice metaphor. It pointed to a reality that included potential suffering along the way and death at the end of the journey. Peter and John, after being flogged by the Sanhedrin for preaching Jesus, “went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.” Paul spoke of suffering for Christ as a privilege and a necessary aspect of his own sanctification. James recommended rejoicing in the presence of trials. There are very few examples in the New Testament of believers having a good time following Jesus at parties, campfires and cruises to the Holy Land.

I like to joke that if people think following Jesus is going to be a bed of roses, they should be reminded that roses have thorns. In Jesus’ final discourse on the night He was betrayed, He told His closest followers, “In the world, you will have affliction, but have courage; I have conquered the world.” There is a passage in Isaiah that people like to recite for comfort in times of trouble, but it begins with a less than comforting word: “When you pass through the waters… when you walk through fire….” God said “when,” not “if.” We are promised protection in and through not from affliction.

I have just finished reading N.T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope. One of his main points is that many Christians think salvation is about “going to Heaven when I die.” I will write more about this in a future post, but for now I must admit that Wright’s point is well-taken. Many believers have an escapist mentality. Their hope in Christ is a future hope of a blissful existence in some indescribable, ethereal place that has no connection with present reality. The most they hope for until then is health, prosperity, and deliverance from trouble in their lives. That is not what Jesus promised, nor is it anything like the experience we read about in the book of Acts or the letters to believers in the New Testament.

Since believers are called to love and obey their Master and daily become more like Him, it would be well to consider the outcome of His perfect obedience to the Heavenly Father’s will. Yes, Jesus Christ did eventually earn a crown of gold for His troubles, but first He wore a crown of thorns. As I said before, taking up a cross to follow Jesus is not an invitation to a party; it is a stark reminder of what following Jesus may cost.

Believers in the West, especially in America, have had a mostly comfortable time for two or three centuries. The current political and social situation has caused some of us to think that the days of easy-believism are passing away. The pleasant crowns we are promised for discipline and obedience are in fact, “in Heaven when we die.” Until then, the “ruler of this world” whom Jesus conquered may have a thorny crown or two waiting for the faithful. Jesus warned His disciples of what was to come, “so that in Me you may have peace.” That’s the key: our peace is in Christ, not in escaping the troubled circumstances we must inevitably endure.

Keep your eyes on Christ, and you can say with Paul, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” Don’t look around; look up. Now if I could just figure out how to do confrontation like Jesus did…

Related posts: Disagree Agreeably; Loving Biblically