Daily the violent acts of humanity are funneled into our homes. The media has coated such heavy pills with slick title cards and high quality graphics making them easier to swallow. The corporate office plans how to exploit newly birthed fear in order to increase ratings and generate revenue. Meanwhile, in the college dorms in Virginia, or on the streets of Iraq, or in the secret meetings hidden from the Iranian government, real people suffer the harsh reality of events that are out of their control. Most of us in middle class America have been spared. And, though sometimes these realities can hit disturbingly close to home, we find ways to shield our fragile worldviews from them. Sure we may pray, or find ourselves saddened by the state of the world, but everyday the steady diet of the chaos that surrounds us finds us a little less surprised and a little more detached.
I believe that there is only one solution to the mess of the present state of the world. Stating this solution WILL sound like an oversimplification by a young idealist, but hear the fullness of my statement before dismissing my argument. This simple answer is summed up in one word: Love. Of course this is Love in the deepest and fullest sense of the word. Not love equivalent to the "love" of pizza or of a particular fashion trend. C.S. Lewis categorizes the love of which I speak as "Gift-Love" and, more specifically, "charity". This kind of love has no basis in the merit of its object, but rather the intrinsic value that the lover finds in the object. If this kind of Love is possible, then it is the single most powerful force that could swallow up terrorism, nuclear war, domestic abuse, exploitation, and on the list goes. Despite the dreams and ambitions of the Enlightenment, reason has proven it cannot turn madmen sane. However, Love never fails.
Please understand that, though the term "love" conjures up all sorts of ideas within our Western world, the Love that I speak of is not a feeling in the pit of the stomach. It is not something that is always delightful. It is a decision. It is an action. Love lives for the interest of the loved object. Philosophically, if all of humanity sought Love for one another as the highest good, this world would be a very different place. However, we know that the complexity of the cosmos and, more powerfully, the selfishness that permeates you and I (though we would probably deny it if asked) makes that a distant fading dream if not an impossibility. Still we understand how drastic the change would be if Love were to somehow be enacted within all humanity (not to mention, the entire living world).
Now comes the tension that the community of Christ is called to live in. Paul makes it abundantly clear that we are no longer in Adam. Rather, we are the new creation in Messiah Jesus. When all of humanity screams at us that love will never work, we enact Love in the present world and face whatever that may bring us. This action can be earth shattering, and may make absolutely no sense to those who seek self preservation and live only for "Need-Love". To the Ayn Rand Objectivist, it is nonsensical and evil. To Sam Harris it is irrational and pseudo-intellectual. To Freud it is an evolutionary byproduct. To those that are in Christ, it is the power of God unto salvation. It is the living out of the Gospel. We live the kingdom, in a world that has not yet been turned over to the King. Our allegiance is not to governments who seek power at any price but to the Messiah Jesus, who eats with the tax collector, the religious leader, the drunk, and the prostitute. Our love goes from the children being ravaged by war and disease in Africa, to the business man who prays over the idol of the almighty dollar every day in his high rise apartment.
As we look at a world being destroyed by hatred, I challenge everyone (including myself) to live the love that is called for by Messiah Jesus. Let the Holy Spirit begin to use us as vehicles of the healing power of the Kingdom of Almighty God! Where hatred and greed destroys, the church must begin to live Love that heals. Where people are starving, the church must begin to live Love that gives all. Where greed is god, the church must reveal through Love the destructiveness of a god who requires the sacrifice of Love and life itself to feed its nature. Our God is Love. He is Love displayed in the man Jesus Christ who gave His life for His creation and three days later rose in victory over death. Ultimately, the love of God will be entwined fully and completely into creation when God's "kingdom comes, Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven." Until then, the church is the new creation in the present and has been given the ministry of reconciliation to the world. Now we must enact that Love decisively and fully as we go into a world full of suffering.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Through the Tomb - The God That Enters Our Suffering
Part of my learning experience in the Christian faith is discovering that it is not always God’s way to save us FROM evil, but rather to conquer evil BY ENTERING INTO IT and DESTROYING IT from the inside out. It has taken me years to learn this. So many times I have begged God to be free from some kind of injustice or pain. I want resurrection now. I want healing today. This is not wrong, but it is not the way God (always) works. Many times He works in a much more surprising and powerful way. Just as God has done with His creation since Genesis, He doesn’t always bring immediate redemption, but rather partakes in the suffering with His creation, and through that suffering and out the other side comes His display of power and love.
This is a part of the Biblical narrative we do well to ponder. Think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These young men would not bow down to worship the golden image of the Babylonian king. This sentenced them to execution, and their response was, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Hearing this story so often growing up, it took me into my college years before I realized the significance of what followed. These men could have been saved FROM the fire, but God chose to save them THROUGH the fire. There is a miraculous difference between the two. God not only saved them THROUGH the fire but strangely He joined them IN the fire.
In the same book, we find Daniel thrown into a den of lions for praying despite the royal decree. Once again, God does not keep Daniel from being thrown into the den of lions, but rather Daniel spends the night there with an angel from the Lord (though the text does not specify, this could be the Angel of the Lord). God did not save Daniel FROM the lion’s den, but rather was with him through it and out the other side.
This movement of God to save THROUGH rather than FROM is a regular pattern in the Scriptures. Most notably, we find it in the Messiah. Good Friday begins the celebration of the suffering King. Our God did not defeat the suffering, decay, and death of His creation as a disassociated bystander. Rather, He came into the curse and bore sin and death in His own body. He did not save creation out of the curse, but has rather entered the curse alongside His creation and will bring it out with His resurrection! This is the mystery of God displayed in power, that He would love us enough to enter the curse brought by our sin, and bring us through it and out the other side victorious (as foreshadowed by Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery). I have been reminded this week that, when our darkest moments are upon us and we desperately cry out to God, instead of always begging for Him to save us FROM our circumstances, maybe we need to ask Him to reveal Himself IN them. To bear our sorrows WITH us, as we trust that through the power of His death and resurrection He will lead us through them and out the other side!
“Then Nebuchadnezzar was full of fury, and the expression on his face changed toward Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He spoke and commanded that they heat the furnace seven times more than it was usually heated. And he commanded certain mighty men of valor who were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and cast them into the burning fiery furnace. Then these men were bound in their coats, their trousers, their turbans, and their other garments, and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Therefore, because the king’s command was urgent, and the furnace exceedingly hot, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished; and he rose in haste and spoke, saying to his counselors, ‘Did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?’ They answered and said to the king, ‘True, O king.’ ‘Look!’ he answered, ‘I see four men loose and walking in the midst of the fire; they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.’”
-Daniel 3:19-25
This is a part of the Biblical narrative we do well to ponder. Think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These young men would not bow down to worship the golden image of the Babylonian king. This sentenced them to execution, and their response was, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Hearing this story so often growing up, it took me into my college years before I realized the significance of what followed. These men could have been saved FROM the fire, but God chose to save them THROUGH the fire. There is a miraculous difference between the two. God not only saved them THROUGH the fire but strangely He joined them IN the fire.
In the same book, we find Daniel thrown into a den of lions for praying despite the royal decree. Once again, God does not keep Daniel from being thrown into the den of lions, but rather Daniel spends the night there with an angel from the Lord (though the text does not specify, this could be the Angel of the Lord). God did not save Daniel FROM the lion’s den, but rather was with him through it and out the other side.
This movement of God to save THROUGH rather than FROM is a regular pattern in the Scriptures. Most notably, we find it in the Messiah. Good Friday begins the celebration of the suffering King. Our God did not defeat the suffering, decay, and death of His creation as a disassociated bystander. Rather, He came into the curse and bore sin and death in His own body. He did not save creation out of the curse, but has rather entered the curse alongside His creation and will bring it out with His resurrection! This is the mystery of God displayed in power, that He would love us enough to enter the curse brought by our sin, and bring us through it and out the other side victorious (as foreshadowed by Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery). I have been reminded this week that, when our darkest moments are upon us and we desperately cry out to God, instead of always begging for Him to save us FROM our circumstances, maybe we need to ask Him to reveal Himself IN them. To bear our sorrows WITH us, as we trust that through the power of His death and resurrection He will lead us through them and out the other side!
“Then Nebuchadnezzar was full of fury, and the expression on his face changed toward Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He spoke and commanded that they heat the furnace seven times more than it was usually heated. And he commanded certain mighty men of valor who were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and cast them into the burning fiery furnace. Then these men were bound in their coats, their trousers, their turbans, and their other garments, and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Therefore, because the king’s command was urgent, and the furnace exceedingly hot, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished; and he rose in haste and spoke, saying to his counselors, ‘Did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?’ They answered and said to the king, ‘True, O king.’ ‘Look!’ he answered, ‘I see four men loose and walking in the midst of the fire; they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.’”
-Daniel 3:19-25
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