God Talks to Whoever He Wants

Like my pastor said, Magi means magician. The Three Wise Men of nativity fame were astrologers and sorcerers.

They were from the East. They were not Jews. They were foreigners.

And God guided them from a far land to a manger in the town of Bethlehem. God chose them to be among the first to honor the Christ child.

It may be that the gold, frankincense, and myrrh that they brought paid for the holy family’s escape to Egypt, where they fled because Harod wanted to murder Jesus. They funded the escape, and they bought time for the holy family. God told them not to report to Herod where they found the messiah; they slipped away in a different direction to elude the murder-minded king.

To be clear: with all of the wealthy women and men in Judea, God gave to these foreign sorcerers the privilege of giving the resources to Joseph, Mary, and Jesus that they needed to escape Harod’s bloody hand. And God went to some trouble to do so.

1. Foreigners and the Bible.

According to the book of Matthew, it was after his resurrection that Jesus told his disciples to "make disciples of all nations". But outsiders had already played prominent roles in the history of salvation.

Abraham paid a tithe to King Melchizedek.

Upright, god-fearing Job was of the land of Uz.

A foreign pharaoh welcomed Joseph and his family to Egypt, saving them from the far-flung famine.

Moses’s father-in-law was a priest of Median. In Exodus 18, he brings Moses’s children and wife to Moses in the wilderness. Moses bowed down to him and kissed him. He brought to Moses a burnt offering and sacrifices to God. He told Moses to appoint judges under himself to hear disputes of the Israelites.

In the book of Nehemiah, we see the leader of the Jewish community taking strong actions against Jews who had taken non-Jewish wives. He forced them to reject them and their offspring. But a whole book of the Bible, Ruth, is about a Moabite woman who, because of her goodness, stood by her mother-in-law when they were both widows. She came to the attention of Boaz, married him, and was a grandmother of King David.

At the end of the age of Jewish kings in Judea and Israel, the Jews were conquered and taken from Judea and Israel as punishment for their apostasy. But after many decades, God charged King Cyrus of Persia to send such Jews as would to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple there.

In Jesus’s time on earth, a Roman centurion pleaded for Jesus to heal his sick daughter. But he said that Jesus need not come under his roof, for he was unworthy of that honor; Jesus had only to give the order, and his daughter would be well. Jesus said that even in Israel he had not found such faith.

Jesus had a long conversation with a Samaritan woman, about her and about salvation. His disciples wondered by he was talking to her, she being both a Samaritan and a woman.

2. Today.

I had a moment when I read an article about parents of a murdered daughter forgiving their daughter’s killer. It is a story of beautiful souls. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/can-forgiveness-play-a-role-in-criminal-justice.html?pagewanted=all

I was surprised by the part of the story about the counselor who mediated the meeting among the killer, his parents, the victim’s parents, and the prosecutor. Hers is a story of finding grace and the power of forgiveness among an exile community of Tibetans. Sujatha Baliga was counseled by the Dali Lama himself, and through meditation found the power to forgive the perpetrator of her own horrific past.

Baliga returned to the United States and signed up for an intensive 10-day meditation course. On the final day, she had a spontaneous experience, not unlike Andy Grosmaire’s at his daughter’s deathbed, of total forgiveness of her father. Sitting cross-legged on an easy chair in her home in Berkeley, Calif., last winter, she described the experience as a "complete relinquishment of anger, hatred and the desire for retribution and revenge." I am now convinced that God moved Sujatha Baiga through the Dali Lama. It took a little time for my head to wrap around that.

But why shouldn’t God be present in the lives of un-believers today as he was with biblical figures such as Moses’s father-in-law, Ruth, Job, and King Cyrus? And those of us Christians, like me, who once were un-believers, are believers today because God moved us while we were un-believers.

God is the god not only of believers, but also of unbelievers. He is present in their lives, as he is in the lives of believers. Sometimes they break his heart, like the would-be murderers of Malala Yousufzai, the Pakistani teenager who advocated for the education of women. But we Christians also break the heart of our God.

3. What of unbelievers?

What of un-believers? I wish that they were believers. Unbelievers who are close to me are present in my prayers. But I do not dismiss that God is protective of them as he has been of me, even when I too did not believe.

Believers and Unbelievers

What?! Apparently, not everybody in America is a Christian. And some of these so-called "non-Christians" have strong opinions. This takes my breath away, but did you know that sometimes they express these opinions? In the media and in courtrooms! And they get away with that!

Thankfully, Fox News is on the story. They published a piece about it on Christmas Eve. It’s called Beyond the War on Christmas.

1. I wish all of my friends were believers.

But seriously, to my non-Christian friends: I wish that you were believers. I do. Since I believe in God and I believe in heaven and in hell, I believe that it would be better if you knew God and he knew you.

2. When unbelief is better than belief.

But, here’s a little walk-back. I would rather that you didn’t believe than that you believed and harmed children. I would rather that you didn’t believe than that you believed and were hateful to your parents. I would rather that you didn’t believe than that you believed and loudly rejoiced about dead American soldiers and murdered children in Connecticut.

Because I believe that then to God your belief would make little or no difference. And your behavior would disgrace the Lord.

3. The perfect logic of unbelief.

And let’s be clear: if you don’t believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, that’s not fainting-spell illogical.

Jesus’s own family tried to restrain him because the crowds were saying that he was crazy. (Mark 3:21.) And those who knew him as he grew up and as a young man were generally unimpressed. ("‘Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’ And they took offense at him." (Matthew 13:55-57 (NRSV).)

As the gospels point out, those who knew Jesus as he grew up and as a young man saw nothing that to them said God-is-with-us. (Although young Jesus was well thought of. (Luke 2:52).)

Yet you, my non-Christian friends, didn’t know Jesus before his ministry, so you don’t have that excuse to be unimpressed. But you might have a better excuse: you know us, your Christian friends.

4. We Christians are unimpressive to your detriment.

The hand in the glove of my wishing that my non-Christian friends believed is that I wish that my Christian friends were more Godly. (Not that any of them do the vile things that I talked about earlier.) I wish also that I were more Godly. Like, I wish I weren’t so selfish.

It’s true: Christians make rude, single-fingered gestures at other Christians on the freeway. We take advantage of others. We look out for ourselves, and we resent having to look out for others, especially if it’s not family, and sometimes even if it is. Our compassion fails. If I meet someone and he calls me "brother", my guard goes up.

Not to say that I have no tenderness toward my fellow believers. In my church, we have a custom in each service of greeting each other and blessing each other with the peace of God. I enjoy this ritual and feel blessed by it.

But of course, these people that I shake hands with, bless, and am blessed by are, for the most part, people who value their religion enough to attend worship every week. I’m grateful to worship in their company. They certainly aren’t Chreasters (folks who show up in church only on Christmas and Easter).

Still, weekly church attendance and gripes when someone says "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" don’t necessarily show that someone has more than a twisty, winded walk with God.

So I concede this: you unbelievers might have some logic and some facts on your side when you’re unimpressed with Jesus because you’re unimpressed with we Christians. And that’s because often we Christian ain’t all that impressive.

5. A pious defense, and its rebuttal.

Now, here I could say something pious like, "We’re not perfect, we’re just forgiven." But I suppose you’d have at least two retorts to that.

First retort: "Not perfect? Try [rude plural noun]!" And that’s right. The news is full of failed and predatory and too-falsely-pious Christians.

Second retort: "Not perfect? Why the hell not?" Fair enough. If Jesus is all that he’s supposed to be, why aren’t we all paragons?

6. Marines: a metaphor.

This issue reminds me of being young and with a young friend. We saw a group of three young, uniformed Marines. They were skinny. My friend said something like, "Those are Marines? I’m not impressed!"

Yet we didn’t know those Marines. We didn’t know their past. We didn’t know how the Marine Corps had shaped them for the better. We didn’t know their present. Just by looking at them, we didn’t know what they knew, what they were capable of. We didn’t know their future. We didn’t know what they would become, which most certainly was more than they were at the moment that my friend and I squinted at their physiques.

And we judged the whole Marine Corps by the three specimens in front of us. Certainly if we had studied Marine Corps heroes, or the history of the Marine Corps, or even if we had seen an example of a Marine who had excelled and thrived in his profession – that would have impressed us.

7. Marine Corps: standards.

Yet among Christians, there usually is less rigor than in the Marine Corps.

Because in the Marine Corps all recruits famously go through boot camp. They get a new vocabulary. They exercise. They learn skills like close combat, how to shoot. They learn all about their weapons. I haven’t gone through boot camp, but by wide reputation I know that it’s hard.

8. Christianity: flab.

But anybody can call himself a Christian who feels like it. By far most churches take whoever walks through the door and finds a seat.

And Christian discipleship isn’t very much. The Bible is our book, but few Christians have read it from cover to cover – never mind more than once. I suspect that our prayer-life is often weak, and so are other exercises through which God might shape us.

Our deliberate building of a relationship with God might be so lackadaisical that it’s a wonder that God has built what he has built in us. If our discipleship is lackadaisical, we might or might not hold onto these gains when trouble comes. Scripture is pessimistic about this.

And modern American Christianity teaches that entry into heaven is easy for all who confess Christ. This tends to sooth believers into a flabby Christianity. If we gain heaven with no effort, why make effort?

This teaching is a historically-recent blight on American Christianity. In a pastoral class I took, the professor told us about a wealthy businessman who was kicked out of the Presbyterian Church at the beginning of the 20^th Century. He was kicked out because he claimed assurance of his salvation. The then-prevailing theology was that we may hope in our salvation, but heaven is not assured. I think that that’s the right way to think about salvation

Knowing the love of God is good and needful. But having no fire under us, so to speak, we Christians often let only our upbringing and the happenstance of life shape us – like almost everyone else.

9. Paragons show what’s possible with God.

The results of leisurely Christianity are what they are. But don’t judge God by leisurely Christians. Judge God by the more-than-mediocre Christians.

Judge God by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was a German pastor and theologian. He was a pacifist. But he did not cling to his pacifism in the face of his anguish over the crimes of the Third Reich. He joined the plot to kill Hitler. The plot failed. He was arrested, imprisoned, and hanged.

Judge God by St. Francis of Assisi. He rejected his advantaged life as a wealthy heir. He lived in poverty to the glory of God, and he taught others to do the same. He founded the Franciscan order.

Judge God by Corrie ten Boom. Her father and her sister and she were Dutch under the Third Reich occupation of their country. They hid Jews in their home. There was a little Jewish baby who cried. No other rescuer would take the baby because he cried so much that there was great danger of discovery. Corrie ten Boom’s father considered it an honor to risk his life and the life of his daughters for the welfare of a Jewish baby who cried too much. Sadly, before the war ended, they were discovered. Of her small family, only Corrie lived to leave the concentration camp. She spent the rest of her time on the earth spreading the gospel.

Judge God by Sister Margaret McBride. She was excommunicated because, as a member of a hospital ethics committee, she and others approved the abortion that saved the life of a mother of four.

Judge God by Sister Rachele Fassera. In 1996 the raping, torturing, murdering Kony’s army kidnaped 139 Ugandan schoolgirls. Sister Rachele pursued them through the jungle on foot, caught up with them, and convinced the 200 cutthroats to release the great majority of the girls.

Few Christians are Dietrich Bonhoeffer or St. Francis or Corrie ten Boom or Sister Margaret McBride or Sister Rachele Fassera. But some that you’d meet in ordinary churches in ordinary places are impressive in their faith and in their walk with God. Or they’re on the way to being impressive in their faith and in their walk with God. I can’t say how many these are, or what percentage these are among believers. But they are there.

10. Realistic possibilities: a swimming metaphor.

Few people who think about swimming to get fit really expect to end up dolphining across the pool with the speed and grace of an Olympic champion. But that doesn’t keep people from swimming for fitness.

And you wouldn’t judge swimming, either, by the guy who jumps in the pool, swims a couple of lazy laps, strikes up a long conversation with another wall-hanger, swims another couple of lazy laps, and calls that a workout. You would judge it by the person who, even if they started out that way, kept at it until they could swim serious workouts on a regular basis with visible results.

Knowing God takes effort and grace. So look for a Christian who makes serious effort and gets visible results. Judge Christianity and its potential by those who strive and who have about them a penumbra of grace.

And when you become such a person yourself, pray for the rest of us.

Liking the Life that I Have

I’m odd.

                   1. About me.

I’m a believer. But unlike other believers I know, I assume that I’m not going to heaven.

I spend evenings reading and liking books like Francis Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order. I’m now also reading Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Melville’s Moby-Dick, and a book about perjury cases called Tangled Webs.

I subscribe to many magazines. Among these are The Economist and Rolling Stone. I read The New York Times.

I write essays and post them on my blog.
2. A brief recent history of my dating disappointments.
I dated a lawyer from Long Beach for a while. It was a swift relationship. It was swift to start and swift to end. As the proverb says, "Riches quickly gained are soon lost."

She wasn’t a communicator. While we dated, she never told me that she was unsatisfied. But one night she fled my home as if she were being whipped by demons, and I didn’t hear from her for a couple of weeks. By the time she formally dismissed our relationship, I had had time to go through all five stages of grief. She gave me reasons for breaking up, but the real reason was that she didn’t love me.

I’ve dated since then. The women have been Christians. In one case, I was strongly drawn to a woman, but the relationship broke on my certainty about my damnation. That doesn’t appeal to women who have their eyes fixed on the modern mirage of certainty of salvation.

I dated a very kind woman. She also broke up with me. We’ve talked since then. But if it takes aggressiveness by me to overcome the barriers between us, then those barriers won’t be overcome, because I won’t be aggressive. With her, I don’t know but that she might one day actually enter heaven. And I don’t want to be the millstone around her neck that drags her down.

Sometimes, I’m protective of a good woman, and the first thing I want to protect her from is me.
3. What I look for.
So I’m odd. With my oddity, finding a soul mate is a challenge.

I know men who have made choices of wives that they regret. So I won’t marry except with my eyes open to the likelihood that we’ll be in love and have harmony to the end.

If I marry, I must marry a kind woman. And I must marry a woman I can share ideas with – someone who won’t lift Fukuyama’s book from my chair and wonder Why?

Realistically, Christianity is optional. A sense of humor is mandatory.

If she were wise, that would be welcome.
4. Acceptance.
But, realistically, today is the best predictor of tomorrow. Today I’m single.

Fine.

My life as a single man is better than I have a right to expect. I find stimulation in ideas, and in language, and in good books. I have leisure to enjoy these things.

I have access to a good swimming pool where I work out. This restores me when I’m tired or anxious or irritable. It gives me self-confidence.

I have a job in which I help people. That can’t be taken for granted. In my thirty-year career, there are things that I’ve enjoyed about work; but consistently I’ve enjoyed making life better for people. It has been a joy to be their expert scout through the (to them) trackless justice system.

I’m grateful for these good things, and I hope that they last while I live. If they are not added to, still my life is (as to these things) fortunate.

I cannot be so obsessed about loneliness that I overlook so many good things.
5. Benediction.
So I say goodbye to the soul mate that I never met. I wish her well. I wish her happiness. I wish I met her, but I’m content to be a stranger to her, because I cannot spend the rest of my life shaking door nobs to doors that do not open, when there is so much in life to be grateful for.

A Stench in the Nostril of God

Lies are a stench in God’s nostril. In the first ten Psalms, four condemn lies and deceit. In the third chapter of the Bible, Eden is lost because of a snake. Satan is called a "liar and the father of lies." (John 8:44.)

To a believer, God hath said should be the last word. It may be, or not.  And not everybody believes. So, God aside, here is a think-piece on truth and lies.

This is not "It’s nice to be good." This is a big deal. In Nixon’s "I’m not a crook";  in  Reagan’s   "[W]e did not - repeat - did not trade weapons, or anything else, for hostages"; in Clinton’s "I did not have sex with that woman"; and in Bush/43’s – well, look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYI7JXGqd0o – in all of these, our leaders pissed on public virtue. And America is fumbling with its zipper.

I don’t want to be preachy. But before we amble down into Gehenna with Richard, Ronald, Bill, and George, let’s look at the landscape of where we are headed. Let’s look back at what we are leaving.

1. Power.

Truth gives power to the weak.

In a court contest against a powerful adversary, a poorer, less-lawyered party can tell himself, "I have truth on my side". This declaration gives moral strength. It literally encourages.

And truth matters. By and large, judgment in court is based on truth. This is important, because a rich man can buy lawyers, but he can’t buy truth. If society values it, truth makes a legal contest more fair.

We expect that the party that should prevail in court can prevail. We expect that being right matters. Yes, our courts aren’t perfect. Sometimes courts convict the innocent. Sometimes courts give judgment against the righteous. But jurors try to rule right. They take seriously their duty to discover the truth. And that matters.

If judgment weren’t based on truth, it would have to be based on something else. Without judgment based on truth, judgment would be more often against the weak and for the powerful.

Like elsewhere. A former colleague of mine became a prosecutor in a court of another culture – I forget where. He told me that judgment there was based on the parties’ comparative status, not on the truth. And in Russia, jury tampering by the government is common. Russian jurors report government interference, but Russian judges do nothing; they even help the government. This happens because Russian courts exist not to determine the truth. They exist to vindicate the government.

These are examples of courts where truth plays a subordinate role. This is unheard of in America’s recent legal history. We assume that a court case is a search for the truth or falsity behind the charges. We may not perfectly find out the truth, but we try to, blunt as the effort sometimes may be.

But if truth is thought of as a shabby has-been, we lose the power of truth in our courts. We become like courts in other countries where truth is valued only if it meshes with any other goal of the court system – upholding the rich against the poor, upholding the insiders against the outsiders, upholding the government against the people. And that would be tragic for us.

2. Usefulness.

Truth is helpful.

Truth acts as a common ground. We might argue about values, but we fundamentally expect that we will agree on basic facts. If disagreement about facts separate us, we try to return to the common ground of agreed facts. If we did not intend for basic facts to be our common ground, the bedrock of our decision-making would be sinking sand.

Society makes life-and-death decisions based on facts. Do we go to war, or no? That depends upon whether our adversary is seeking weapons of mass destruction or not. Do we extend unemployment benefits to the unemployed, or no? That depends upon whether the unemployed need the benefits to stay afloat while they seek work, or if a government stipend squelches their effort to find replacement work. Do we reform health care so that sick people don’t die because they are poor, or no? That depends upon whether the reform includes provisions to kill old people (aka "Death Panels"). These are decisions where truth was needed to make right, crucial choices. These are decisions where people will choose wrong if they believe lies. These are cases in which lives will be wasted by a wrong decision.

People who inject truth into society’s debates help society make right choices. People who inject lies corrode society’s decision-making.

People also make important personal decisions based on truth. Sometimes my clients wobble about whether to take a plea bargain or go to trial. I often tell them, "I wasn’t there. You were. You know what happened. If the charges are true, then this is a fair deal. But if the charges are false, then no deal is worthwhile and you should fight the case in front of a jury." Most of my clients make the right decision.

3. Morality.

Morality presumes truth.

Lies are the servants of immorality. A man who gets between sheets with a woman not his wife tells his wife that he was driving home a co-worker. A person who destroys the innocence of a child denies molestation. A police officer who wrongfully beats a man claims that the man assaulted him. A politician who betrays his constituency says he acted on their behalf. A thief denies stealing.

Lies make a mockery of morality. Some people labor to do right, even when doing wrong would be easier or more profitable. But the liar cheaply gains the benefit of virtue by falsely claiming it.

4. Culture.

In our culture, we value and expect truth.

In romance, we don’t expect a suitor to woo a bride with lies. Someone who does is called a cad.

In medicine, we don’t expect a doctor to give us advice he knows is wrong. A doctor who does is called a quack.

In law, lawyers have a duty to speak truthfully to the judge Dishonest lawyers are called shysters.

In science, we don’t expect scientists to fudge data. One who does is despised in the scientific community.

In business, businesses are expected to be upright. We are shocked to be cheated.

We expect our friends to be honest with us. When we discover that a friend has lied, we loose trust in him.

The assault on truth turns back all of these expectations and values.

5. Conclusion.

Lies do to truth what forgeries do to currency. They debase it. They shake people’s trust in it.

When nominated as a Republican Senate candidate, Lincoln said:

A house divided against itself cannot stand'.(Mark 3:25) I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.

In truth and lies, the same must be true. Between virtue and evil, the middle cannot hold.

One last note. I started out saying that lies are a stench in God’s nostril.  I started out saying that to believers, God hath said may be the last word. But to be clear: in my observation, believers are not noticeably more truthful than non-believers. This makes me sad to behold believers.

Sources

For more on Russian government interference with juries: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/world/europe/16jury.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=russian%20juries&st=cse