The Stoning of Shelomith’s Son

If people think of the biblical Book of Leviticus, they usually don’t think of love. Leviticus, after all, is the book of the Bible that says that the penalty for killing a person is death. It is literally the book of eye-for-an-eye.

Yet it is also the book where the command first appears to "love your neighbor as yourself." It commands kind and fair treatment of the aliens among the Israelites. There is a commandment not to pick clean a field, but to leave some remainders of its grain or fruit for aliens and the poor to glean.

And there is a story that at first seems to illustrate harshness. But it also a sorrowful story of love.

1. The story of Shelomith’s son, part 1.

The story involves a man who in a fight blasphemed against God. Here is the story from Leviticus 24:

10 Now the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father went out among the Israelites, and a fight broke out in the camp between him and an Israelite. 11 The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the Name with a curse; so they brought him to Moses. (His mother’s name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri the Danite.) 12 They put him in custody until the will of the Lord should be made clear to them.

13 Then the Lord said to Moses: 14 "Take the blasphemer outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his head, and the entire assembly is to stone him. [NIV.]

The man was stoned to death.

This might seem like a straightforward tale of crime and punishment. But it’s not. It solicits compassion from the reader.

That’s true for a couple of reasons. There’s enough detail in this story that a thoughtful reader can see the side of the nameless blasphemer. For example, we know that his father was Egyptian. Entering into this tale with imagination, we can see what his life might have been like among the Israelites.

He was the son of one of the oppressors from whom God rescued Israel. How much was he accepted by his mother’s people? How much was he an outsider? How much was daily provocation a catalyst of the fight that he got into?

I believe that when the Bible gives a detail, it gives it for a reason. So I believe that the story suggests that this unnamed man’s life was hard, his life was lonely, he felt like an outsider, and the fight might not have been completely his fault.

And because he was an outsider, he might have believed that the God of Israel was not his God. At least, he might have thought that God was not his God like God was the God of the insiders who made him feel like less than them.

So in his rage he was provoked to fatal speech about that God. Again, the otherwise unimportant details of this story invite the reader to see why this hot-blooded man might have blasphemed foolishly.

There’s more. Aside from Moses, one person in that story is named. The name of the blasphemer is lost to memory. The name of the man he fought is lost to memory. The names of the witnesses to the fight and to the stoning are lost to memory. The names of the ones who threw the stones are lost to memory. But we know the name of the blasphemer’s mother; her name was Shelomith.

There was a point to giving her name. By naming her, and by naming her alone, Leviticus directs the reader to think on her. It’s like a picture, and everyone is shown in black-and-white except for Shelomith, who is shown in color. This focus on her invites us to weigh her response to this tragedy.

Her husband, the Egyptian, very well might have stayed in the comfort of Egypt, rather than to pack his bags with the slaves. If that’s true, then it might have been  that Shelomith's future support and welfare depended largely on her son. The loss of him would have been everything to her, even beyond the natural love she had for her son.

So this is not a simple morality tale of just deserts. It’s a tale of sorrow.

2. The story of Shelomith’s son: Part 2.

This is an exercise in imagination, about the stoning of Shelomith’s son.

Shelomith’s son missed his father. His father had said, "Why should I carry my property in a cart with slaves into the wilderness instead of eating melons in my own land?" But Shelomith’s son went with his mother.

But if he was his mother’s son, he was also the son of an Egyptian, and it was rare for him to have friends among his mother’s people. For that matter, his mother too was slighted for her marriage to an Egyptian. People said, "Were the men among her own people hiding down a well? Did she have to marry with a cock that broke our backs?"

Shelomith’s son and his mother were kind to each other. Few others were.

Shelomith’s son herded goats. On this day, he was bringing his goats back from watering them. He suffered the usual taunts. The taunts were about himself, about his father, about his mother.

Close to his tent, he passed one of his usual provokers. The words stung. They always stung. Every time he took an insult and did not respond, he felt a little of his manhood slip away.

A kinsman of his mother was nearby. He was big, beefy, handsome, and he was younger that Shelomiths’s son. Shelomith’s son always assumed that this kinsman would get a good marriage. His family was well regarded, unlike his own.

The kinsman stepped beside Shelomith’s son and put his hand on his shoulder. He told the taunter to settle down – to leave alone this son of his kinswoman.

Shelomith’s son eyed his kinsman. However the kinsman meant his intervention, to Shelomith’s son it was condescension. It was a pronouncement that Shelomith’s son needed to be defended by his big, beefy, handsome, young kinsman.

Shelomith’s son slapped his kinsman. He slapped him across the face.

Shelomith’s son discovered that that felt good. He tried to do it again, but his kinsman pushed away the second slap. And he pushed away every slap after that that Selomith’s son tried to land on him.

Finally, the kinsman raised his fist as if he were going to strike Shelomith’s son. When Shelomith’s son ducked his head to avoid the blow, the kinsman locked his strong arm around Shelomith’s son’s head. Shelomith’s son wrestled furiously to escape, but his kinsman was too big and strong. A crowd gathered. Finally, Shelomith’s son stopped struggling. Then his kinsman pushed him to the ground.

Shelomith’s son lost any remaining dignity when he landed first on his buttocks and then on his back. His head struck a fist-sized rock, hurting him further.

He clambered to his feet. He shouted, "I spit on your God! I spit in the face of your God!"

The crowd erupted. Shelomith’s son suddenly was afraid. The crowd surged at him and grabbed him. He couldn’t move. Then they bound his hands and feet and lay him on his stomach.

They carried him to Moses. Shelomith’s son waited on his face. Then Moses pronounced judgment. The crowed carried Shelomith’s son, still bound, out of the camp.

There, he lay on his back surrounded by many. He could see faces. Some were angry. Some were glad. Some were grim. Some were blank.

He saw his kinsman. His kinsman’s face was sorrow.

Back in the crowd, he caught a glimpse of his mother. Compared to his kinsman, her face was a mirror of deeper sorrow. And Shelomith’s son knew that she could not save him; nor, in years to come, could he protect her or comfort her.

Then the stones came.

3. The implications of the stoning of Shelomith’s son.

I believe that we are supposed to feel compassion for Shelomith and her son.

In times to come, we would see this compassion in Jesus. Men of high position would wonder aggressively why, if he was a righteous man, he spent time with sinners. Simon the Pharisee would wonder why, if Jesus were a prophet, he permitted an immoral woman to bathe his feet with tears and wash them with her hair.

Jesus was invited to condone the stoning of the women caught in adultery. He saved her life; then he forgave her.

Sometimes I look at people I know with the eyes of Simon the Pharisee. As I judge them, these people exasperate me. The story of the stoning of Shelomith’s son reminds me to have compassion. It is compassion that Jesus taught. These are people he died for.

Salvation is a matter of high stakes. The future of humankind and every human is determined by choices people make from the beginning of history to the end. The ultimate choice was made by Jesus, but the Bible from beginning to end is a story of choices.

In the story of the stoning of Shelomith’s son, we see that choices have consequences. We also see compassion. It is a story of sorrow, but in that story love is the other side of sorrow.

Hope, Grudge, and Prayer

There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more,

And there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want. [Proverbs 11:24 (NASB).]

1. Coming out of hopelessness.

For many years I thought that God had rejected me forever. I could not go to church. I could not read the Bible. When I tried to pray, I felt like I was trespassing.

This was the sin of hopelessness.

Things have changed. I go to church, and I read the Bible, and I pray. I do not share the modern American certainty of salvation, but I have a hope of Heaven.

The subject of this piece is prayer.

I pray several times a day. I regret the wasted years when I did not pray. But even before my years of alienation from God, I did not pray near enough.

2. Puzzling history.

When I was a young man, my mom confided in me that she had always prayed for me every day. This has been a lifelong blessing, even though she died long ago when she was about the age that I am now.

So why, when I practiced religion, didn’t I pray for my parents? That’s the merest thing that a son or daughter can do. I pray for them now, even though they are long dead. People always need prayers of the living, and, I think, always benefit from it.

3. The world’s wisdom and the foolishness of Christians.

The wisdom of the world says that prayer is an empty act. Claudius in Hamlet despaired that his prayers did not rise to Heaven, but clung flightlessly to Earth. Smart folk think that about all prayer. They think that prayers affect the world only as the flecks of spit from fervent supplicants moisten the air.

That is not the Christian concept. In The Book of Revelation, chapter 5, Jesus took a sealed scroll from the hand of God that only he could open. When he took the scroll, "the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people." (NIV.) The prayers of God’s people are incense in Heaven, saved by God for the right time.

4. Prayer evolution.

When I started to pray for people again, I prayed for my friends, for my family, for my church, and for my president. It wasn’t that long ago that I started to do that.

But now I pray for more people.

Here’s a secret about me. I hold grudges. Just yesterday, I was driving home from work and I remembered a judge who pounded me long ago. A prosecutor had subpoenaed my client’s medical records for a manslaughter/drunk driving case I was defending. She wanted me to agree that the jury could see those records, and she wanted me to agree to that before she unsealed the records.

I’m many things, but I don’t think that I’m stupid. I won’t agree to let records go to the jury before I actually look at those records and know what’s in them. There might be something in those records that hurts my client, and I might be able to keep that harmful stuff from the jury with a timely objection. But I won’t know that until I see what’s in the records. What the prosecutor wanted was ridiculous.

But when I refused, the prosecutor complained to the judge. And the judge was so angry at me that I thought that steam was going to geyser out of his ears. And in his anger he ruled against me on a pending motion on a silly technicality. He made it clear that he did this because of my lack of ethics in refusing to agree to let the jury see these records that I had in fact not looked at. He made it clear that he was teaching me a lesson.

As I remembered this incident, I invented a speech that I would have liked to have made to that judge. It would have lasted several minutes, and it would lacerated him with sarcasm. But slowly I realized that I was wrong to relish this speech that fortunately I had never made.

So instead I prayed for him. I prayed that he would have real wisdom as he performed his office. I hope that God answers that prayer, and I think that he will.

I hold a lot of grudges. That’s how I am. But now, as often as a grudge comes to mind, I use it as prompt to pray for God to bless the object of my grudge. Sometimes there’s a tug-of-war in my mind between fanning my grudge and praying it away.

And it’s not only these people that I pray for. As I said, I was blessed with a mom that prayed for me every day. But I know that some people have never been prayed for. So I’ve started to try to think of people who might never have had someone to pray for them, and I step up.

5. Scattering and increase.

Make no mistake. I pray more than I did, but I am far far away from praying without ceasing. (1 Thessalonians 5.)

But I’m grateful for the time I spend in prayer. That brings me back to the quotation at the start of this piece, Proverbs 11:24:

There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more,

And there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want.

I scatter my prayers; I hope that these scattered prayers will increase the spirit of God in me.

Sean Hannity Died for Your Sins

Actually, he didn’t.

That’s the point.

Because I see Hannity’s point of view more prominent than that of Jesus.

I never understood the expression, "You are what you eat." But I truly believe that you are what you behold. If you spend your time watching God, godliness arises in you. Paul always looked to the author of his salvation. And he could say that Christ lived in him. (Galatians 2:20.) He could say that the spirit of God lives in us; if the spirit of Christ does not live in us, we do not belong to him. (Romans 8:9)

But America today is not Paul. We Americans collectively spend more time beholding Hannity than beholding Jesus. Our thoughts are not Christ’s. Our thoughts are Hannity’s. Our priorities are not Christ’s. Our priorities are Hannity’s.

So the question is: on the last day, will we know Jesus? Or will we know Hannity?

I see America becoming false. In my professional life, I deal with liars like never before. And in public life, I see lies, lies, lies. I wonder what started this flight from godliness.

I see a willfulness. I see politicians willing to ruin the country and bring suffering to its people, for political gain. This is a new thing. There are no rules. There are only winners and losers. Patriotism exists in name only, especially among those who appeal most loudly to patriotism.

And the reason is that Christianity is being eclipsed by politics.

People regard Hannity because they are convinced that his message is important for today. Because the immediate enemy is not the devil; it is the Democrats. Like a clanging cymbal, Hannity proclaims the evil of Democratic influence. The prospect of Obama having two terms looms as a greater crisis than the prospect of eternal damnation.

People regard liberal media stars, too.  But I talk about conservative stars, because they are more likely to be the darlings of the religious.  If any liberal reads this and thinks my message is only for conservatives, they misread me.

As for Jesus? Beating back socialism will take work, but salvation is easy. It’s taken care of. It’s a done deal. No worries.

As if confirmation were needed – we go to church. We approve when Glenn Beck speaks admiringly of Christian martyr Dietrich Bohnoeffer. We hate Muslims – that’s the same as loving God, right? We disapprove of secular humanism – isn’t that Christ within us? We believe in the Bible word for word – isn’t that faith?

No. And if your burning heart doesn’t tell you that, this short essay won’t either. If the decline in American morals doesn’t frighten you, these words won’t. But I remember what we were 30 years ago, and I see what we are now. And I'm afraid. Because I see in the soiling of America proof of God’s withdrawal from us.

There is a popular saying that goes, "Don’t let the best be the enemy of the good." In other words, don’t be so determined to bring about the best solution that you forsake a good solution and instead get nothing.

But religion is the opposite of that. To love your brothers and sisters, spouse and children, and father and mother is a very good thing. But Jesus said, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26 (NIV).) That is, to Christ, the good is the enemy of the best.

Think of whether the "good" or your news outlet, the "good" of your political party, crowds out the "best" of salvation.

Think of whether any other "good" thing crowds out God.

I’m thinking that it does.

I’m thinking that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a long trip through harsh conditions. And to make it safely to the end, you have to leave everything behind that will hinder you. I remember reading about pioneers. Often, at the beginning of their journey, they would take everything that was dear to them, only to leave their once-precious cargo along the way, when sheer survival compelled them to know the difference between luxuries and necessities. Cut loose the unnecessary early; it holds you back.

I speak what I do not do – I have my heroes, although they are liberal, not conservative. But I think I speak the truth. And I think I’m wiser for doubting my salvation than those who are sure of their place in Heaven.

Daughters, Prisoners, and Builders

To believe is to believe that you have been torn
from the abyss, yet stand waveringly on its rim.
– Christian Wiman, every riven thing, "Canyon de Chelly, Arizona" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2010).

1.  The rich daughter.

That poem segment captures the uncertainty of salvation. Here is a true story about life with unwarranted certainty about salvation.

A woman in her nineties was financially independent. But she had an unexpected property-tax bill. She needed a bridge loan to pay it, until money came in that she was expecting. She turned to her daughter, a multi-millionaire with property and airplanes and vacation homes. The foundation for the daughter’s millions was seed money from her mother.

The daughter has long seethed with resentment against her brother. She doesn’t want her mother to give anything to the brother in her lifetime or in her will.

So the daughter coerced her mother to put all of her wealth into an irrevocable trust that named the daughter as trustee. That gave the daughter complete control over her mother’s property. She also coerced her mother to forsake her right to write her own will.

When the mother demanded to get back control of her own property, the daughter stopped giving money for her to live on.

From relatives, the mother scraped together a small sum to sue to wrest back control of her property. The daughter hired an expensive, silk-suit law firm to fight the mother. The daughter paid the legal bills from the mother’s trust.

The daughter fought in court until the trust was bankrupt. Then she settled the lawsuit. A piece of property in the trust remains to be sold, but when it is sold, the money will go to the daughter’s lawyers.

The daughter is a proud Christian.

If she knew the gospel of Luke, the daughter might see herself as the rich man of Luke 12 who stored his harvest of grain and counted himself safe and happy. But death took him. Jesus said: "So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." (Luke 12:21(KJV).) I don’t see a woman who ruins he mother as being "rich toward God."

But I doubt that she sees herself in that parable. Instead, I suppose she has brick-solid certainty in her salvation. I suppose she expects to be welcomed into the joy of God when on her deathbed she whispers for her soul to go. I suppose she is sure that cruelty to her parent will not cause God to kick her into the flames like a viper coiled on his foot. Because if she thought that evil-mindedness and cruel actions would bar her from eternal happiness, it’s hard to imagine that she would ruin her mother.

I don’t write about this daughter who ruined her mother so that we can rejoice that we are better than she is. I write about her so that we can contemplate how we are like her. It is her – no doubt – assurance of her own virtue that soothes her conscience and enables her to do evil. Her story serves us poorly if it soothes our own sense of virtue, rather than provoking us to search and strengthen our souls.

2. Life prisoners.

 I represent prisoners who have life sentences. I try to get them parole. The prisoners who call forth my best efforts are those who make the most of their chance to win release. They stay out of trouble; they take self-improvement courses; they help other prisoners; they win the admiration of correctional officers; they take college classes; and they learn vocations. The ones who call forth my least effort are those who do the opposite – the ones who think they can get out of prison no matter what they do while inside of prison. They are hopeless causes.

God’s intervention opens the way to heaven for us. God opens the way to heaven, but salvation, while it is a gift, is also a partnership. To God’s divine effort, he expects us to add diligence, virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. (2 Peter 1:5-8.) We do this to confirm God’s call and choice of us, so that we may be welcomed into his eternal kingdom. (1 Peter 2:10-11.)

I write about life prisoners so that we might be like the diligent prisoners who respond with great effort to the chance for freedom.

3. Foolish builders.
 
The alternative to adding these things to our souls – virtue, knowledge, self-control, etc. – is to be foolish builders. Jesus spoke of building a tower. Before you start, you should count the cost of finishing it, or you will lay the foundation and stop. Then you will be a laughingstock. (Luke 14:28-30.) Unfinished Christians will be the laughingstocks of Hell.

We must not be cruel daughters, un-reformed prisoners, or foolish builders. We must always add to our towers, brick by brick.

Certainty and Uncertainty

The apostle Paul saw and heard the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. He spent the rest of his life preaching the gospel. He is a hero of the biblical book of Acts. We study his life and letters two-thousand years later.

You’d think that such a man would believe that he knew what he knew. But no. Paul knew that his knowledge was narrow and hindered by life in this world:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV).)

Paul freely confessed the limits of what he knew.

We Americans today are unlike Paul. At the risk of simplifying: spiritually, we are a People Who Know. We do not, like Paul, know the limits of our knowledge. The Unknown is a stranger to us.

Instead, we make a friend of Certainty. We are certain about religion. We are certain about scripture. We are certain that scripture is inerrant. And we are certain about our interpretation of scripture. We believe that scripture is easy, and that to interpret it, we need only to "believe" it, which often means to read it literally. Sometimes, a biblical answer is as simple as finding a Bible verse on an internet-Bible search engine.

Because we are certain about scripture, and because we are certain that we understand it, we are certain about our salvation. We quote Acts 16:31:

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (KJV)

We are more certain than we should be.

We are certain because our world seduces us into false confidence. Technology hides spiritual risk behind the mirage of easy living.

See how we live. Jets whisper us to far places. Computers in our cars warn us about engine problems before we are stranded on the freeway. Unemployment insurance protects us from the economic wreck of job loss (somewhat), and social security and 401(k) plans shelter us in old age. Police and firemen are a 9-1-1 call away, and 9-1-1 also summons an ambulance to rush us to an emergency room. Please do not infer that I am against these things; I say only that they hide the uncertainty of life in this world by making our lives more cocooned than the lives of our forebears.

Our forebears were moved to accept uncertainty by the uncertainty of the lives that they lived. In this country, they might leave behind what they knew and travel for months by wagon to the unknown. Death along the way was a known risk – death by heat, cold, hunger, thirst, sickness, injury, or attack. Pioneers carried guns because government protection was days or weeks away. Their wagons carried supplies that they would need, because chances to re-supply were few. A lame animal could doom a family.

Even urban life in times past had risks that are rare in our time and in our country. In times past, doctors could help only if you did not get too sick. A wound that modern medicine easily treats could be deadly in the times before antibiotics. Doctors did not wash their hand or clean their surgery tools before cutting into flesh, because they did not know about germs. Pregnancy came with danger, and birth came with only a hope that the child would live to adulthood. This was important, because children were the chief hope for livelihood in old age.

There was no social safety-net.

Diseases regularly decimated populations.

So the lives of our forebears were filled with risks that our own are not. Our benign world must affect the way we see our God, our lives, and ourselves. It leads us to see differently than we would see if we lived in the harsh world of our forebears. The ease and seeming-certainty of our material world mask the danger and uncertainty of the spiritual life.

The world of our forebears taught the right lessons; ours misleads us. They were hardscrabble; we are rich. And riches, we know, deceive. (Matthew 13:22.)

We are all on a countdown to the end of life. This countdown has no visible clock that tells us when our time will be up. That uncertainty is a metaphor for the uncertainty, corporeal and spiritual, of our lives. We turn away from this broad uncertainty at our own risk.

This is the beginning of my argument that we should bind uncertainty to our hearts.

God, Madness, and Me

Madness changed the way I see myself and the way I see God.

Madness for me was foraging in dumpsters and looking for places to sleep out of the wind. (Orange groves are bad.  Bushes next to freeways are good.)  It was disembodied voices and a terrible vision. It was lying strapped to a gurney, howling while a hospital staff-member taunted me. It was hard, degrading, and scary.

I’m well now.

I won’t tell much about my life as a homeless lunatic. Not now, at least. Truth is, before today I've told this story to few people, and I've told the whole story to nobody. I worry that people will look down on me.

But if I keep the larger part of the story to myself, I will at least tell you a truth of its effect. This trauma led me to reject some beliefs that I shared with most American Christians. It fundamentally changed my cozy, easy ideas about God. It shifted the earth under me, and it cleared my mind.

My madness did not draw me closer to God. It did sharpen my belief in him. I know that he exists like I know the lines in my hand. But my experience was the opposite of rapture. It brought me no joy.  It deepened me; it sobered me.

My Christianity was not cursory before my madness. I was a long-time churchgoer. I was a deacon at my Presbyterian church. I tithed. I took courses at a theological seminary in Pasadena. I left a career as a public prosecutor to travel to China, where, under an American Christian-service organization, I taught law at Chinese colleges and universities. I spent years absorbing scripture daily, sometimes for hours. I had read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation several times in several translations.

After my madness, I lost my hunger for scripture. Lately, the Bible has seized my attention again. I don’t know where this inspiration comes from, but I welcome it.

I haven’t gone without biblical musings in the years between my trauma and now. Based upon years of study, I could draw upon a pool of knowledge. These musings confirmed an accord between the Bible and what I learned from my season of madness. I believe that still as I test my beliefs by studying the Word.

The Spanish painter Francisco Goya became deaf.  After his deafness, he produced paintings that were literally and emotionally dark, even monstrous.  My theology after my madness became dark like Goya's paintings after his deafness. 

From this dark place, I see a tidal wave coming.  It's like madness taught me to reckon water that pulls back to sea that foretells a destructive wave to come.  I worry for people, that they don't see this, that they don't talk about it, that they don't take steps to live and not to die.

Instead, I sense that America makes happy-talk about God and salvation.  We are an optimistic people, and our theology is optimistic: God is kind, salvation is easy, and Hell is a place for people worse than us.  Our material comfort fools us into a false sense of a benign universe and a tolerant God.  God is tolerant, but only to a point.

This is because the stakes are supremely high.  We want the world to be a pleasure boat, but it's a liberty ship trying to take us to safety through a sea filled with a dangerous enemy that seeks our harm.  A liberty ship demands sterner discipline that a cruise ship.

So I speak out to warn. I feel like the ancient mariner of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem. He started on a voyage that seemed at first ordinary. But he and his fellow seamen were swept to a far-away, harsh sea. He sinned grievously. All died on this supernatural voyage but the mariner. He returned to the living to tell his sobering tale. It’s not a perfect simile, but like the "grey beard loon" of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I think my journey gives me something important to tell. I have done this a little in past posts, and I plan to do it more in the future.

And yet:

Come now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into this city, and spend a year there, and trade, and get gain: whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. What is your life? For ye are a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall both live, and do this or that. [James 4:13-15.]

Still, these are my plans.

Christians, Nut Up.

We Christians are wont to hiss like punctured air hoses when we are criticized by outsiders. We cast a baleful eye at celebrated mockers like Bill Mahar, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. We resent films like Religulous and books like The God Delusion and God is Not Great. Books and films like these make us ache for the quick return of the Lord, so that these Christian-mocking miscreants speedily will be separated from their smug sense of superiority. "Amen", we say.

1. Placing the blame.

But these architects of anti-faith have powerful allies. Their allies are us. Jesus said,

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men. [Matthew 5:13 (ASV)]

The simple, sorry truth is that when enemies of faith tread on people of faith, it is because we have lost our saltiness. The would-be debunkers aren’t to blame; we are. When our adversaries tread us under foot, they only prove that Jesus was right.

2. Knowing our natures.

I think this places blame where it belongs. We are soiled. Increasingly, I nod grimly when I think of the biblical prophet Isaiah saying, "I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips . . .." (Isaiah 6:5 (ASV).) Lies are commonplace in our culture, from bottom to top.

And we love our money and our comfort. We live without qualm to the limit of our means, or beyond it. We buy cars big enough to host hockey games in; now that America is retreating from vehicular behemoths, it is not religious restraint that drums retreat, but the high price of gasoline. We squeeze into the pews of churches that assure us that God wants us to be rich.

Our love of money and comfort crowds out our love of God because we are rich.  In America, the rich don’t repose only in Bel Air; compared to people in biblical times, virtually any resident of Colton, California is rich.  And among nations, America is a rich nation. 

Therefore it is dangerous for us to ignore how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. But we don't worry; we clamber upon our camels and amble toward the eye of the needle that stands between us and the kingdom. (Mark 10:25.)

We don't know the Bible as we once did. Instead, we draw our principles from what we put in front of ourselves. We learn ethics from eight seasons of the television series "24", rather than from an equal number of seasons with the Bible.

The Bible instructs that:

[W]hoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me: But whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea. [Matthew 18:5-6 (ASV).]

But the Catholic Church had to take costly instruction from secular courts about protecting children in their care. This is only the most dramatic religious scandal in a society that grows accustomed to religious scandals, or accustomed to scandals of the pious.

3. Changing our thinking.

Reckless before chasm-sized topics, I suggest, as a start, three modifications of modern American theology.

First, we need to reevaluate our understanding of God’s grace. We seem to believe that salvation is like buying software online, putting a checkmark in the box next to "I agree". So easy.

Here’s a bleaker simile: we are like diners satiating ourselves at the table of sin, and when the grim reaper presents the tariff, we jerk our thumbs over our shoulders and say, "Give that to that guy over there, dying on the cross."

Theologian Dietrich Bohnhoeffer surveyed the doctrine of grace in his native Germany before the outbreak of World War II. He saw a country like ours, awash in belief in cheap grace. We all know how that turned out then: Christianity in Germany did not resist the war, and it did not resist the mass murder of the Jews.

Bohnhoeffer wrote a study of grace called The Cost of Discipleship. It’s no light read; it requires much time and close attention. But it rewards the reading of it.

Second, we must learn to fear God. This is so biblical that it cries out from the pages of scripture. For example, "[Jehovah] will fulfil the desire of them that fear him; He also will hear their cry and will save them." (Psalms 145:19 (ASV).) And "Jehovah taketh pleasure in them that fear him, In those that hope in his lovingkindness." (Psalms 147:11 (ASV).) And "The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge . . .." (Proverbs 1:7 (ASV).)  And  "[B]e not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28 (ASV).)

Some mornings as I go into the courthouse, I hear lay preachers preaching hellfire and brimstone to the people lined up to go through the metal detectors. I confess, I groan inwardly. This is partly my reaction to the indecency of forcing a biblical harangue upon a captive audience. But it’s also partly that I don’t think that these lay preachers really fear God; they reveal more condescension than love and trembling. Fear of God must be more than lip service; it must be a holy dread.

Third, we would do well to have less confidence in our own salvation. This walks against the wind of popular "assurance of salvation." And yet I find nothing in scripture that establishes assurance of salvation. Instead, I read of a mere remnant of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob returning to their homeland from Babylonian captivity. I read of many disciples abandoning Jesus when he teaches hard things. (John 6:26-66.) I read Matthew 7:21-23:

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. [ASV]

Acts 2:21 superficially seems to contradict Matthew 7:21-23:

And it shall be, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

In light of Acts 2:21, what of those of Matthew 7:22 who prophesied, cast out demons, did mighty works "by thy name", and were not saved? On the day of judgment, they could only say "Lord, Lord" (Matthew 7:22), not the name of the Lord (Acts 2:21). The reconciliation of these two passages is this: not all who claim Jesus in their lives on Earth will be permitted to call on the name of the Lord on the day of judgment.

4. Practicing the spiritual disciplines.

Those are suggestions about how to think about our God and ourselves. What then do we do? This is another mountain, one that I’ll try to scale in two paragraphs.

When a flight attendant gives instructions about emergencies, she tells the passengers to put the oxygen cup over their own air passages before helping other passengers. That’s probably pretty good advice for spiritual growth.

Therefore study. Learn. Grow. This, like almost everything else I have touched on so far, is a huge subject, not exhaustible in a blog post. So I’ll just say where to get direction. Aside from the Bible, I recommend three books. Richard Foster wrote a modern classic called Celebration of Discipline. One great thing about Foster’s book is that he lists other resources. I also recommend Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines. Don Postema’s Space for God is good for group study.

5. Conclusion.

I have said grim things. Maybe I’m a crank. But I urge an antidote to the free, easy, empty Christianity of our time. Who wants to spend a lifetime in church and an eternity apart from God? I fear that too many of us will be mocked in Gehenna for our unfinished towers. (Luke 14:28-30.)

John the Baptist said to the multitudes who came to him to be baptized, "Ye offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Luke 3:7 (ASV).) Forget who warned us; let's be warned.

I started out this post by mentioning our dislike of criticism by professional skeptics and others.  But here is a saying: "Take care of your character, and your reputation will take care of itself."  This should be the Christians' response to our critics.

Note:

I cite books, from the rank to the sublime, in the text. Where I cite a book, I usually provide a link to that book on Amazon.com. I provide the link only for your convenience. If you want the book, great; but it doesn’t matter to me where you get it.