Christ is the Crisis

 When Peter preached to Cornelius as recorded in Acts 10, he said something that caught my attention the last time I read it. Peter described Jesus as the one, “appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead.” Two words in particular struck me: appointed and judge. The latter surprised me somewhat because I recall that John said Jesus was not sent to judge. Yet, Peter insists that God appointed or designated the Son for a particular purpose.

The word “appointed” immediately made me think of a rhyming word that is synonymous: anointed. Throughout the Old Testament we see the word used in a formal, symbolic sense as kings, priests and prophets were anointed. This ceremony involved pouring scented oil on the head of the subject, apparently in sufficient quantity to run down his body. In Psalm 133, David pictured the anointing oil, “running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes!” It sounds messy, but it is in the character of the very visible religious rites of the Jewish faith.

Oil is frequently used in Scripture as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, perhaps stemming from the anointing ritual. It was assumed, after all, that the prophet, priest and king being anointed would be working with God’s Spirit. The picture of oil flowing from the head over the body speaks of the necessity of Holy Spirit control over all one does. It is also interesting to note that the oil used for the ceremony was sweetly scented with spices that smell like ginger and cinnamon. Just as the aroma would flow out from the anointed one, the Spirit would be present in the subject’s ministrations.

So it was with Jesus when He walked the earth as the ultimate Prophet, Priest and King. He fulfilled each of His designated roles perfectly because He was perfectly in tune with the Spirit of His Father. Throughout His final discourse in the Gospel of John, the Savior repeatedly links the ministry of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as one. He also prays that we, His followers, would be one in the same way.

In Acts 10 we have Peter saying that Jesus was appointed, may I say anointed, by God as judge. To understand the manner of Jesus’ judging we have to look at the Greek word Peter used. It is from the word commonly translated “judge” (κρίνω). What stood out to me this time through was the fact that one of the cognates of this word transliterates as krisis (κρίσις). Peter says, in effect, that Jesus is the crisis point for all people, living or dead. The root meaning of crisis speaks of a point of decision. Jesus is the point at which all humanity is separated, selected, approved (or not) as the word denotes.

This idea solves the apparent contradiction raised when Peter says Jesus is the judge while John says He was not sent to judge. Here’s how: John says that the judgement, the separation is already accomplished by the fact that a person either believes Jesus is the Savior or disbelieves. It is not as if Jesus sits behind a bench and decrees this one and that one; it is more like Jesus simply exists as the living stone that everyone must either stand on or stumble over.

I also like the idea that in every crisis in our lives, Jesus is the one point upon which our decision must always turn. We have the option to focus on the crisis and be troubled, or we can focus on Jesus and watch the crisis fade into insignificance. “In this world you will have trouble,” Jesus said. “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Not only does the decision to trust Jesus bring peace, it also leads to the building of our faith. James says, “Consider it pure joy… whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” Hang in there, even in the crisis; that’s where you’ll find Jesus.

Herd Immunity or Incredulity: Raising the Herd Intellect

 If you have been reading my posts lately, you know I have been expressing amazement that our situation regarding COVID 19 has so quickly reached the point of mass hysteria. I won’t repeat all the statistics here. You can read the details in the previous articles which I linked at the end of this post. I will summarize. Although I am certain the number is inflated due to political and financial reasons I explained in earlier posts, I will use the number currently being published (200,000) as deaths from COVID 19 in this one calculation. This number means 1 death from COVID 19 for every 1,650 people given 330M population for the United States.

Even that number is not a good representation of what is happening to the general population because as of the latest statistics I have, 75% of all COVID 19 deaths are among the elderly in nursing or assisted living homes. 94% of those people had other health issues which would have caused their demise in a relatively short time. This means that the mortality rate for COVID 19 among otherwise healthy individuals is so small as to be almost insignificant. Yet we have trashed the economy, wrecked the education system and thrown the general population into a panic.

As bad as all that is, there is something else that no one is talking about. We hear daily about the tens of thousands of new COVID 19 cases being reported. What we are not hearing is that the vast majority of those reported infections are without symptoms or with very slight flu-like conditions. Here’s the story no one is telling: those tens of thousands who get infected every day without serious complications will develop natural antibodies that make them immune to the virus. This is known as herd immunity. Our current policies dealing with COVID 19 are actually thwarting the advance of herd immunity and prolonging the suffering.

As I have said before, I don’t mean to sound crass or unsympathetic. I mourn with those who mourn the deaths of their elderly parents or grandparents. I am sympathetic toward those who have lost loved ones in any generation. It may sound like an oxymoron, but death is an inevitable part of life. Ever since we were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, people have been dying from disease. That’s part of the curse we bear because of sin; not personal sin, but corporate sin resulting from our being human beings in the line of Adam.

I believe we would be better off if we dropped all the COVID 19 restrictions except those that apply to any flu season: be sensible, wash your hands, cough into your sleeve, etc. If we open back up for business (and school) as usual, herd immunity would eventually render COVID 19 as harmless as SARS or Swine Flu or H1N1 bubonic plague. I cannot do that myself; neither can you alone. However, if herd rationality were to catch on, herd immunity would save the day. Will you spread this message?

Related articles: “Join the Lemmings, Anyone?” “The Angel Says… Fear Not” “The Emperor Has No Clothes” “The Winnowing Fork of God” “2020 COVID Easter” “Finding God in COVID 19”

Truth Matters

I have been re-reading Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who is There for the third or fourth time. Schaeffer is without doubt the foremost Christian thinker of the twentieth century. He carefully chronicles the descent of modern thinking into ultimate despair. Philosophy, art, music and finally even theology fell prey to the crushing loss of rationality. When people decided that God was not there, they tried in vain to create a system that could explain the universe and the human condition using only reason. That failed, leaving them nothing but despair. They decided that truth did not exist or was simply a construct of each individual.

Faith that had once anchored human thinking to a God who is there became irrational belief in something non-existent. Without a sure foundation on which to place faith, modern man had nothing left but faith in faith – a faith that somehow the universe would make sense of itself. Modern Western thinking became almost identical to ancient Eastern pantheistic monism, meaning that the universe was the source of life, mind, and even god with a small “g.”

Schaeffer correctly understood that if as Christians we don’t recognize the depth of despair of modern thinkers, if we don’t realize that they have abandoned hope in absolute truth, we will never be able to communicate the gospel to them. The evidence of their despair and truthlessness is present across all aspects of Western culture. In large measure, art has become meaningless blobs of color; music has become cacophonous, unharmonious noise; and sadly, even theology has lost connection with the truth of the Word and in its place trumpets a social justice platform without sin, miracle or redemption through the Cross.

Specific examples of this abound. From the 1960’s onward, sexual intercourse became uncoupled from procreation making the social, practical bonds of marriage as useless as the Bible truth on which chastity is based. In the 1970’s a movement began which has become a virtual tidal wave of sub-cultural pressure to remove the stigma from homosexual relationships thereby legitimizing single-gender parenting in contradiction to the Scriptural wisdom inherent in the mother/father union for raising a family. In the 1990’s political progressives picked up the mantra of their early twentieth century predecessors and began pushing a form of socialism that in all previous iterations had produced humanistic, anti-religious societies which failed miserably.

The challenge for Christians is to find a way to reintroduce truth, even the concept that absolute truth exists, into a cultural milieu that completely discounts the one thing that could rescue them from their despair. Because moderns deny the existence of truth, they can swallow whatever babble comes from their chosen spokespeople: academics steeped in post-modern humanism, talking heads in the “news” media, TV and movie stars, and ridiculously overpaid athlete-entertainers. It doesn’t matter that none of these people has any basis in reality for their opinions; they are self-validating because there is no measure by which to contradict them if truth does not exist.

Unfortunately for modern thinkers, the desire for truth remains deep within the human soul. Solomon called it eternity in their hearts. Augustine spoke of a restlessness that only God could satisfy. So even while they deny the truth that could provide relief from despair, they often live in a way that contradicts their stated position. They cannot live their humanistic philosophy consistently. Schaeffer pointed out that there was one thing that often revealed the inconsistency of their lives: love. While claiming that everything was meaningless, they clung to the meaning of love for someone they held dear.

Even though they spoke to a radically different cultural situation, Jesus and the writers of the New Testament identified the one thing that can speak truth in any time or place: love for God and love of neighbor. By this, the Savior said, all people will know you are following Me. Love casts out fear, one said. Faith, though it is misplaced, hope, though it is near despair and love continue, said the Apostle Paul, but the greatest of these is love.

I am convinced that even though I am drawn to highly intellectual approaches like Francis Shaeffer’s, the Christian’s best hope for reaching the modern generation is to love like crazy. Love one another and love every neighbor we can reach. As I have written often, biblical love is not a feeling; it is a caring for the other that is made real by actions for the other’s benefit. I also realize that although it is my duty to do what I can to share the truth, ultimately it is not anything I do that causes another to accept the truth of the gospel; it is only by the work of Holy Spirit that the madness of the modern thinker can be healed. And that’s the truth.

Related articles:  “The Truth About the Truth” “The Uncomfortable Subject” “Who is Discriminating?” “Here Comes the Judge” “Obama Isn’t the Problem”

Redeem the Time

When Jesus was teaching His disciples at Jacob’s Well in Samaria, He told them the fields were ready for harvest. The men were no doubt confused because it was months until harvest time, and they missed the Teacher’s metaphor meaning not the crops, but the people were ready. He then demonstrated truth by convincing most of the people in town that He was indeed the long-awaited Messiah. As I mentioned in “The Samaritan Revelation,” this was twice dumbfounding to the disciples since the converts were Samaritans. A less likely place for revival could hardly be imagined.

I think we are in a similar position now. I said so a while back in “Finding God in COVID 19.” I think the double whammy of COVID 19 and the civil unrest we are experiencing has our “neighbors” in a perfect position to hear the gospel. Maybe I should have said see the gospel. The phrase “redeeming the time” was brought to my mind recently. I went to Ephesians 5 to be reminded of the full context of the admonition. I discovered that the verse containing the phrase begins with a therefore. As I often do, I looked to see what the “therefore” was there for. It is actually one link in a chain of therefores. Here is my condensed paraphrase of the thought Paul begins in verse 17 of chapter 4:

My life and my words say that you should no longer live the way unbelievers live without concern for truth or goodness, but take a higher, spiritual view of things, so that you become the person you ought to be, letting everyone you meet see what really matters. Be kind toward one another, compassionate, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you. Demonstrate to everyone the kind of love your Heavenly Father showed you while you learn how to please God. Don’t get caught up in the wicked ways of the unbelievers around you, but rather reveal them for what they are. Take utmost care to spend your time wisely because these days are full of perils, hardships and annoyances.

Notice that Paul was calling the Ephesians to action: “Live… become… see… be… demonstrate… reveal… spend your time wisely.” None of these words sound like shelter-in-place behaviors (sorry). This admonition sounds like something we should put into practice. At its root, it is a practical description of what following the “Greatest Commandment” (love God; love your neighbor) would look like. The old saying is true that actions speak louder than words.

Another thing you might notice in my paraphrase is how I translated the last word. The King James and many others say we should redeem the time because the days are evil. In both the Old and New Testaments, the word “evil” is not primarily a moral judgment; it has a broader meaning. “Perils, hardships and annoyances” comes straight from the Greek dictionary definition of the word Paul used. The Hebrew word often translated “evil” means unpleasantness, calamity, distress or adversity.

We are in the midst of some serious unpleasantness right now. Days like these call for wisdom. We need to spend our time doing everything we can to show God’s love to a hurting world. While actions are extremely important, we are not excused from speaking the truth when we have an opportunity. If you are not sure how to begin a conversation about God with your neighbor, I can recommend some resources. The Gospel Coalition has an article on how to evangelize during a pandemic. God Space by Doug Pollock has some very simple, practical suggestions. I wrote Lead a Horse to Water to help people break the ice that often keeps them from sharing the gospel. Put Google to good use; you’ll find plenty of help. Whatever you do, take utmost care to spend your time wisely because these days are full of perils, hardships and annoyances. Let people know you believe better days are ahead – an eternity of better days.

Join the Lemmings, Anyone?

 I’ve written several blogs now about how mystifying this whole COVID 19 shutdown is to me. While visiting my doctor recently I asked him how many COVID deaths he had seen among his patients. None. I asked how many patients in the whole practice of five doctors had succumbed to the deadly virus. None. Since there is approximately one doctor for every 1,500 Americans, I assumed there would be several if not dozens. None. I was shocked because we are led to believe people are dying right and left. This thing is dangerous.

Real numbers are hard to come by since some states don’t report at all while others are almost certainly over-reporting for various reasons. (See “The Emperor Has No Clothes” for more.) I decided to focus closer to home and see what the data in Michigan look like. There are still the same caveats about the truth in the statistics, but at least we are dealing with a more stable set, I hope. I also realize that some other states (California and New York for example) would have higher numbers. 

Checking several sources leads me to be confident that approximately 6,500 corona deaths have been reported in Michigan. I believe that number is likely inflated, but let's use it for this purpose. With an estimated population of 10 million, the deaths are 0.065% of the population. That means 65 of every 100,000 Michiganders are reported to have died from this deadly virus. Fewer than 1 in 1000 people have died from this deadly virus. Apparently fewer even than that at my doctor's office. Remember too that nearly 5,000 of those people were in nursing homes and would have died soon even without the virus.

At the same time, according M-Live, 14% of businesses owners interviewed in late April doubt they will ever reopen. The same article reported 28% of business owners are not sure they will survive. Here’s why that matters: according to a federal government report, 49.1% of Michiganders work for small businesses. Small businesses represent 99.6% of all businesses in Michigan. That means that 7 out 100 workers will be permanently out of work at their pre-COVID employers if they shutter them forever. Again, check the English teacher’s math, but that looks like for every 1 COVID death in Michigan, 100 workers will be out of a job.

With an estimated 1.9 million small business employees, these figures mean 266,000 will lose their jobs because 6,500 reportedly died from COVID 19. Twice that many are out of work now, but hopefully their employers can reopen – hopefully. We are told that closing down businesses, staying home, wearing masks, keeping six feet apart in public is all for the public good. The few “sacrifice” for the good of the many. But here it is reversed: the many (266,000) are sacrificing for the few (6,500 -- or really, 1,500 since the ones in nursing homes were not working).

There is a movement abroad here that is reshaping who we are and how we think. Homosexual activists did the same thing to us in the last few decades. (See “The Uncomfortable Subject”) The ready availability of birth control and abortion rocked our world from the 1970’s onward. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs changed our thinking (and behavior) dramatically in the middle of the last century. How so? Gay marriage is now acceptable; extra-marital sex and abortion have become commonplace. Living off a government hand-out has lost virtually all the stigma that used to be attached.

The changes taking place in society today are going on at such a rapid pace that it is breathtaking. In a few months, we have accepted that the government has the right to tell us when and where we can work, shop, eat, play and pray. California even went so far as to ban singing in church gatherings – the few that are allowed; I assume they wanted to curtail the massive exhalations of shed virus cells from exalting God with our voices. The best economy in decades has been devastated to the point that it may take years to recover.

I feel helpless. I’m not afraid. (Read “The Angel Says Unto You: Fear Not”) I do feel a little bit like the lemmings I mentioned in the “Emperor” post. As a sincere Christian, I am duty-bound to obey the powers that be. I’m that guy who stays pretty close to the speed limit, stops at stop signs, pays his taxes, and, yes, wears a mask, despite knowing how useless a mask is in preventing the spread of COVID 19.

I’m going to get truly scary now, so hold onto your chair. What if this is how the one-world government of the antichrist is going to be foisted off on us. You would have to know me to know how difficult that is for me to say. I don’t fully believe the premillennial/dispensational version of Revelation end times theology with its tribulation and all. If it is correct, though (I’m okay with “if”), I can see how the entire civilized world could jump on some guy’s bandwagon, drink the Kool-Aid, take the blue pill, hop to it and throw themselves over the cliffs like lemmings. We’ve already begun.

Do I Really Believe?

 

“It is better for you that I go away.”

It would be hard to imagine a more unbelievable statement. Jesus Christ spoke these words to His closest followers shortly before He was betrayed and crucified. The men who heard this shocking statement were in the midst of a three-year roller coaster ride in which they had witnessed their teacher swoop from complete obscurity to highest acclaim, only to fall out of favor briefly, then race back into the public’s heart on more than one occasion. Only days prior to His incredible statement on this night, huge crowds of religious pilgrims had lined the route to Jerusalem and tossed cloaks and palm branches in Jesus’ path as they shouted, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.”  We know, of course, that this same crowd was goaded by the Jewish hierarchy into asking for Jesus crucifixion within a week of His so-called triumphal entry.

“It is better for you that I go away,” He said to the men who had not long before proclaimed Him to be the Christ of God. For a Jew in the first century, the only longing that rivaled their hope for a Messiah, the Christ, was their wish to be free of Roman domination. As I have noted elsewhere, even the mongrel Samaritans were looking for the Messiah. Granted, many thought the two dreams would coalesce, and the Messiah would charge in on a war horse and drive out the hated Romans. Whether for religious or political reasons, messianic hope was at a fever pitch in Jesus’ day.

Jesus said it was better that He go away in spite of the fact that more than once His faithful promised to follow Him no matter where it led. When the teaching got difficult to swallow, He even asked His close disciples if they were considering joining the throng of disenchanted. Their answer was unequivocal: “Where would we go? You have the words of life.” They did, quite literally, hang on His every word. They not only heard the messages He preached to the crowds; they were there for the debriefings that made sense of some admittedly hard teaching. Can you imagine the campfire conversations after events like the water was turned to wine or the walk on water or the raising of Lazarus?

What could be better than what these men had experienced? Still, Jesus said there was something better awaiting them after He went away. You may be tired of me asking the question since you already know that Jesus explained why His departure would benefit the disciples more than His remaining with them in the second half of the sentence I have been laboring over. Jesus explained, “For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you.”

The question I have been banging on is really this: what is so special about the Advocate that it would surpass all the wonderful things they had experienced in Jesus’ presence? If we are to believe what Jesus said (really?), the coming of the Advocate, aka Holy Spirit, was going to be even more special, more beneficial than the wonder of His physical presence. Really. I have to ask myself if I really believe what Jesus said. I often think how great it would be to have Jesus physically present – OK, not that great at first because I know I would fall on my face in shock like everyone else who ever got that close to God. But once He said, “Fear not,” and lifted me up it would be great.

If He were literally here, He would tell me what He told the disciples. I suspect He would tell me that His physical presence is nowhere near as helpful to me as the indwelling presence of Holy Spirit. For one thing, I would have what He promised the disciples: full knowledge of everything I need to know. For another thing, Holy Spirit can be with me every second of every day of my life whereas Jesus, in a physical sense, would be limited to one appearance worldwide at any given time.

The greatest benefit to having Jesus send Holy Spirit back in His place is that I can have His comfort, confidence and power on the spot – any spot I’m in. At this point I am falling in shame on my face again if Jesus is really in the room because I don’t live as if that were true. Being the loving, gracious, forgiving Savior that He is, Jesus would lift me up again and tell me not to be ashamed. I think He would also come up with a really tactful yet forceful way to tell me to start living like I believe what He said. Do you believe what He said?

The Angel Says Unto You: Fear Not

Here is a shocking statistic that you may not have considered in all the noise about the COVID 19 pandemic. The mortality rate among humans is 100%. That’s right: every single person who ever gets born eventually gets dead. (The only exception will be those alive at Christ’s return, but that doesn’t really figure into standard statistical calculations.) I am not trying to be glib or flippant here. I mean no disrespect toward those who have lost loved ones due to the COVID 19 virus. What I would like to do is calm the fears many people have toward the COVID 19 pandemic.

The word “pandemic” sounds scary. A true pandemic is scary. The black plague that swept Europe in the middle ages killed roughly 50% of the population; that’s a pandemic. The Spanish flu of 1918 killed tens of millions worldwide and approximately 675,000 in the US alone; that sounds like a pandemic until you realize that it represents a mortality rate of only 0.5%. That means 5 people out of 1,000 died. That’s not happy times, but it’s not all that scary. I don’t know 1,000 people; I don’t think I am close enough to 100 people to know when one of them dies. In other words, I could have lived through the Spanish flu and not known a single person who died from it.

According to a Google study in 2020, about 160,000 people have died in the US (as of July) due to COVID 19; however, that is a sloppy statistic (based on Wikipedia and NY Times numbers). Even if that number was correct, statistics also show that 75% of 2020 COVID 19 deaths were patients in nursing homes. People go to nursing homes because they already have serious health issues. One study reports that only 6% of reported COVID 19 deaths in nursing homes were due to the virus alone. That means 94% of nursing home deaths reported as COVID involved comorbidities.

Here is what makes that fact really curious. In a pre-COVID study, it was found that 31.5% of nursing home patients die in any given year. According to the Nursing Home Abuse Center, there are 1.4 million nursing home residents in the United States. If 31.5% of them die in 2020, that is 441,000. Follow me: take 160,000 reported COVID deaths overall; make 75% of them nursing home fatalities and you have 120,000. Notice that is only a little more than half of the expected deaths in nursing homes by this time in 2020. I don’t mean to be crass, but almost twice that many people would have died even without the dreaded virus pandemic.

Between 2010 and 2017, deaths reported as flu-related ranged from a high of 51,000 in 2014-2015 to a low of 12,000 in 2011-2012. If you take the 120,000 nursing home deaths out of the 160,000, you are left with 40,000 COVID deaths outside the nursing home population. If that death rate in the non-nursing home population remains steady, we would lose 80,000 to COVID 19 in 2020. That number is highly suspect because there is so much hanky-panky going on with the reported deaths due to political and financial motivations. (For more thoughts on this see, “The Emperor Has No Clothes.”) However, if the 80,000 number were true, it still is only a tiny fraction higher in deaths per 100,000 than our recent flu seasons. Not so scary, really.

As a way to compare with other causes of death in the US, here are some facts. Preventable injuries killed approximately 160,000 people in 2018 – the same number as this scary pandemic is supposed to have claimed so far. On the other hand, over 650,000 people died in 2018 from heart disease; nearly 600,000 died from cancer. Those numbers are pretty scary. It is interesting to note that according to the Institute for Highway Safety, “There were 33,654 fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2018 in which 36,560 deaths occurred.” They also noted that 65% of those fatally injured had alcohol in their blood at some level. Drunk drivers kill more people than die from the flu most years. Maybe the COVID bar shut downs will have some effect after all.

I said up top that my goal is to calm fears. There are people in our society who are trying to make us afraid. My fear is that the draconian measures that are being applied to the COVID 19 situation are going to so damage our economy that it will take several years to recover. Many small businesses may never recover because there is no “Reset” button for a lost life’s work. Millions of people will be harmed by the COVID 19 policies instituted by governments. I realize that’s not as bad as getting dead from the virus, but when you understand the truly tiny morbidity rate from the virus, you have to ask if the economic disaster is worth the cost.

There is another good reason not to fear. If you waded through all my statistical evidence and remain unconvinced, try this. For a true believer, death is not scary – sure, being drawn and quartered or sawn in half or burned at the stake would be kind of scary. Many Christians have had to face that kind of fear. But the truth is that death is the best thing that can happen to anyone whose life is hidden in Christ. Like Paul said, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That being the case, bring it on, COVID; I ain’t skeered.