Shame and Its Uses

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! [Luke 13:34 (NRSV).]

1. Looking in.

Christians are mocked for "feeling guilty about being human." Thanks for that. I am human. And I am guilty.

Some things about me shame me. Some are things I do or have done; some are things I don’t do or haven’t done. I'm unhappy with some of my thoughts. Sometimes I find an attitude that I don’t know about until something happens that makes it rise to my awareness. It’s like kicking over a rock and finding a creepy, scaley thing.

Not that I want to play King of the Hill, grappling with all challengers to be Most Lowly. I know there's good in me. But this essay focusses on the blessing of knowing the other parts. Since mine is the only life I've lived, I use own my life for illustration.

Shame isn't popular, nor guilt. But if a thrifty hunter uses all parts of a deer, why should heaven waste any part of our common human experience?

2. Faith Jenga.

Faith is a game of Jenga. That’s the game with a small tower of stacked blocks of wood. The object is not to be the last one to pull out a piece of wood before the tower collapses. Stay with me. I’ll tie this in.

Some Christians won’t pull out a single block. Every part of the Bible, and every story in it, is historic and accurate in all its parts. Fine.

Other Christians pull out so many blocks that it’s a marvel that their faith-tower stands at all. OK.

I’m somewhere in between. But when the Bible says that God rewards those who seek him, I believe that. That's part of my Jenga faith-tower.

3. Gaining the image of God.

Maybe it’s a cliché  to say that God is not found on a mountain top, but in our hearts. So seeking God is the journey to grow into the image of God.

In a way, it’s like a pilot overhearing nuances in the conversation of another pilot and knowing from those signs of shared knowledge that they share an occupation. Those signs might go over the heads of people who don't fly. Likewise, as we grow into the likeness of Christ, we recognize Jesus, and he recognizes us.

Not that we become perfect in this world. And not that we can advance without God’s grace. That’s true of believer and non-believer alike.

And not that gaining God’s image is all internal and detached from what we do. It isn’t. What we do, how we treat people, how we serve them, is the essence of godliness.

But part of becoming more perfect is wanting to. And that’s where I began this essay, looking inside and feeling shame. I read an online newspaper, and I had a negative reaction to a person I read about because of his high merit and his race. My reaction shamed me. I feel shame as I write this. I did not know that that was in me, but God did. Now I know, and I can start to purge it, with God’s help, with all possible speed.

Humility has value.

4. Rebellion.

The point is, I suppose, that God blesses us by showing us what he sees but we don’t. He gives us eyes to look inward.

Not long ago, I wrote an essay (Sowing with Tears) in which I associated youthful disobedience to God with the collapse of my life. To use the Jenga metaphor in a different way, I pulled out too many elements of faithfulness, and the tower came down.

That’s a plausible explanation but maybe not the right one, and certainly not the only one.

5. No catastrophe wasted.

It may be that God gave me directions, not because he expected me to do what he said or seemed to say, but so as not to waste the catastrophe that I was headed into. I had an unrealistically high opinion of myself (weirdly fused with fear and un-confidence). If I had not refused to do what I thought I should do, I would not have realized that I was like Jerusalem in the quotation at the beginning of this piece. God wanted to protect me from what he knew was coming. My arrogance kept me from getting under his wing. I did not board the ark as the clouds gathered.

My un-rightness was known to God. God, in his mercy, made it known to me. But it took everything going to hell for me to realize it.

After everything went to hell, for years I lived with the belief that salvation was lost to me. My prior unconscious sense that heaven was inevitable was stripped away like a grizzly strips bark from a tree. My pre-catastrophe confidence in the inevitability of heaven defied much of scripture. Now, I do not bet against the mercy of God, but I do not take it for granted, I hope. And I think that puts me in a better place than I was before.

6.  Yes, but.

But scripture supports a possibility apart from my life's collapse as the discipline of the Lord or a teachable moment. That's the possibility expressed by the book of Job, Psalm 44, and John 9:1-7 (esp., “'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Jesus answered, 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.'" (NRSV).)

Sometimes, stuff just happens.

As to my history, I think the truth lies in the first two possibilities. There was a supernatural part to the collapse of my life. Much of my interpretation of the experience came from that part of it. In the years afterward, I've tried to put those parts into piles labeled "From God", "From Evil", and "From Illness".  My understanding is imperfect. The sorting continues.

Maybe as time goes by the sorting becomes less important, and I'm left with the blessing of humility in greater measure than I had before. I'm left with a gladness for the belated restoration of hope. Both of those are, to me, a kind of rebirth.

7. Prayer (Psalm 139:1-6 (NRSV).)

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
   and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
   O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
   and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   it is so high that I cannot attain it.

The Weakling, Outsider King

The virgin birth of Jesus and Jesus rising from the dead are to many folks things of fiction, hope for the simple, flip-the-page fables.

To believers, they are simple truth. Why not? You can peer from the side of a mountain at sunrise. The distance of the stars, the sun rising, birdsongs as the sun brightens the land, the busy-ness of nature that uncurls with the sun’s rolling warmth – these make it believable that a virgin can give birth, and the dead can live again. If nature came from nothing, what is impossible?

1. The most amazing passage in the Bible?

That’s why, more than the immaculate conception, or the resurrection, or the Exodus from Egypt, or the four horsemen of Revelation, this might be the most amazing passage in the Bible. And there’s nothing supernatural about it. It’s very human. It takes place after Jesus is arrested.

[A]fter flogging Jesus, [Pontius Pilate] handed him over to be crucified. Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters); and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. [Mark 15:15-20 (NRSV).]

2. Cruelty has reasons.

Why did these soldiers crudely disrespect Jesus? Maybe because:

He was a Jew. To Roman soldiers, that made Jesus an outsider. It’s the same when a White looks down on a Black; or a Muslim on a Christian; or an Indian on a Pakistani.

Also, he was weak. He was completely under their power.

And he was a law-breaker. So, as they saw it, he deserved the welts and bleeding slices on his back. Soon he would die a slow, painful death, and they were fine with that.

And he was a "king". And likely these Roman soldiers hated kings – or centurions, or emperors, or anyone else who they had to bow to, who kept them from having their own way.

3. Weakness.

It’s the weakness that most amazes. A cohort of soldiers pushed around, mocked, and spat upon the human expression of the God of gods.

And God permitted it.

This is the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire. This is the God who in one night slaughtered 185,000 soldiers besieging King Hezekiah’s Jerusalem. This is the God who calmed a storm with words.

This God stood by.

This forbearance was not an act of power. It was an act of character. The character, in its way, amazes more than the power.

Jesus’s act was an act of submission to humankind. And it was not submission to humankind in its nobility, wisdom, and compassion. It was not Good clasping respectful hands with Good. It was submission to humankind the shallow bully. It was submission to a cohort of soldiers that acted like a pack of jackals and debased a man about to suffer and die. They desecrated God, and God let them.

4. The Messiah.

The people waiting for the Messiah were waiting for a Psalm 66 Messiah. They were expecting, and wanting, a Messiah that would make his enemies "cringe", even if he also let others roll chariots over their heads.

They were expecting a Psalm 2 Messiah, who would break the kings of the earth with an iron rod and smash them like clay pots.

5. Jesus the un-God.

This Jesus was the Messiah? The world must wonder if we expect anyone to accept this. It goes against intuition. It does now. It did then.

But I choose not to fight that fight every day. The fight that breaks out in my mind more often than whether God is God or Jesus is Jesus, is this: what kind of Lord is he?

Everyone has a god. If they crave wealth, wealth makes them hop. If it’s beauty, or drugs, or liberalism, or learning, so be it.

But I want these words of Joshua tattooed on my heart:

Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." [Joshua 24:15 (NRSV).]

Every day I pray for a pure heart, because I don’t have one. But the God of infinite might who gives his son over to treatment by we men described in Mark 15 – this God is perfect. He’s the God I want to serve.

6. The Jesus who is.

And this Jesus is the opposite of his oppressors.

They hated him because he was an outsider, and he was. But he spoke with the Samaritan woman. He told the story of the Good Samaritan. Jews hated Samaritans, but Jesus did not. And Jesus told his disciples to make disciples of all nations. There is no outsider with Jesus.

They hated him because he was weak, and he was. But he is close to the broken-hearted. He cares for the poor. And the blind. An the sick. And the dying.

They hated him because he was a law-breaker, and he was. But he kept company with sinners, and seemed to prefer them to the so-called righteous.

They hated him because he was a king, and he is. But Jesus loves his God and Father, and he submits completely to his father’s will.

I trust this Jesus. My salvation is safer in his hands than in my own.

7. Prayer.

Lord Jesus, day by day, bit by bit, please make me like you. Amen.

Sowing with Tears

Three decades ago, I asked God who I should marry. I got a forceful answer that seemed supernatural. It was a woman I knew from church. She was nice, but I didn't want her for a wife.

So I read books about supernatural guidance; but I did so like a lawyer, looking for a loophole. After that, I rejected what seemed to be God's clear guidance in other ways on other substantial matters.

Then, without drugs, my life collapsed spectacularly, in ways that usually only illegal drugs can bring about. My hope left. It has since been restored.
 
With Jesus, some people ask questions and get answers. Some people get better. Some people get angry. And some people seem to want their question back, like me; like the young man who kneels before Jesus to ask the way to eternal life.

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’" He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. [Mark 10:17-22 (NRSV).]

1. A story without an end?

We don’t know whether the young man sells everything he has and follows Jesus.

The young man goes away grieving. But grief often has stages, and the last stage can be acceptance. So: for all we know, it could be that the young man got to the end of his grief and did what Jesus said to do.

After all, his zeal was clear. He ran to Jesus. He knelt at his feet. He followed all of the laws of Moses. If he did so humbly, out of deep longing for God - if Psalm 119 was written on his heart, maybe this meeting between the young man and Jesus led to an excellent result.

2.  Three kings.

When the Israelites under slavery ask Pharaoh for freedom to go to the desert for a festival to the Lord, Pharaoh refuses, and he makes them make bricks at the same pace as before. But he makes them gather their own straw for the bricks; before, he supplied the straw.

When the Israelites come to Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, they ask him to lighten the tax burden that his father had laid on them. He refuses. He says that his little finger is thicker than his father’s loins. He says that his father whipped them with whips; he will whip them with scorpions.

And Jesus, loving the young man who ran to him and knelt, gave him more to give up than the young man thought that he could.

This gives new meaning to the phrase "To those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." (Mark 4:25.) I usually think of this as spiritual wealth added to spiritual wealth; but, here, the young man has the law of Moses on his back, and Jesus tells him to carry it without his riches, adding poverty to his burden.

3. A pattern.

When the young man knelt in front of Jesus, Jesus’s disciples had already left everything to follow him (though most of them started with less than the young man). Peter points out their sacrifice. And Jesus promises them reward. But see the warning here, wedged between blessings, easy to overlook:

"Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. [Mark 10:29-30 (NRSV).]

Persecutions. Those who yearn for God above children, parents, brothers and sisters, and material wealth – they will be persecuted. Which, apparently, is the calling of Christians.

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin), so as to live for the rest of your earthly life no longer by human desires but by the will of God. [1 Peter 4:1-2 (NRSV).]

In case this bitter herb were not abundant enough in Mark 10, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come to Jesus and tell him "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." (Mark 10:35 (NRSV).) Jesus doesn’t choose door-number-one; he asks them what they want before he makes any promise. They tell him that they want to sit at his right hand and his left when he comes into his glory.

Jesus then equates pain and promise -- at least, promise in the afterlife. "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (Says the man who will, in love of humanity and obedience to God, give himself up to be whipped, spat upon, beaten, basically tortured – the man who will die thirsty under the sun unable to move because his hands and feet are nailed to timber.)
 

James and John say that they can. And Jesus acknowledges that they will – suffer, that is. (Mark 10:29.)

The other disciples apparently aren’t quite paying attention, because they’re resentful of James and John.
 

In Mark 10, people start asking for things in verse 13: parents want Jesus to bless their children.

4. Leaving clothing behind.
 

The caboose in the Mark 10 caravan of gimme’s ends with blind Bartimaeus casting off his cloak, receiving his sight, and following Jesus. And I wonder if Bartimaeus’s gesture, casting off his cloak and going to Jesus to get his sight, is a freighted literary gesture. I wonder if it ties the chain of connected stories that start at Mark 10:13 to something that happens in chapter 14.
 

Because after Jesus is arrested, Mark 14 ends with this:

A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.

I have no proof, but I like to think that this is the young man who knelt before Jesus, who, in the end, gave up all he had to follow his Savior.

5.  A man after Jesus's own heart.

It's easy think of the young man who knelt in front of Jesus and mentally rebuke him. But that overlooks that Jesus looked on him and loved him. We know that Jesus is love personified, but biblical declarations of Jesus's love for a specific person stand out.

If the follower who left his garment in the hands of the pursuers was this young man, his change of heart came quickly. This likely would not have happened if he had  rejected what Jesus said. Grief is one thing; rejection is another. The young man grieved. That left open the possibility of change. "May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy." (Psalm 126:5.)

6.  Why the young man was better than me.

I wrote about my rejection of God's guidance. To be clear: to investigate supernatural guidance is a good idea. Not all guidance comes from God. But there were three vital differences between this young man and me.

First, my heart was not right. I was stubborn, proud, and selfish. Thirty years on, after pain, humiliation, and grief, I am less so. I'm more like the young man. Now I fear and trust God more than I did. Those two attitudes toward God might seem paradoxical, but they aren't.

Second, I was determined to go against God's guidance. I wanted to say "No." That was wrong. God defies neat rules, but I think that saying no to God was like stopping my ears and stomping off. It cut off my ability to hear him. God did not have to withdraw his holy spirit or take away his blessing. I cast them out.

Third, I argued with God, but I didn't enter into a conversation with him. Praying always for willingness to do God's will, and, hopefully, meaning it and getting it, I could have said what I thought, speaking openly and honestly with him. The conversation might have been short, or it might have gone on for a time. God might have changed my mind; or he might have shown me that I misunderstood his will; or, maybe, he might have relented. I will never know what the outcome would have been, because I never humbly entered into that conversation.

And that's why the young man in Mark 10 was a giant, compared to me.

 

7. Prayer.

Lord God, your son who freed us from our sins taught us to pray, "do not bring us to the time of trial." We offer that prayer. We also offer ourselves to your will, to your love, to your wisdom, hoping for eternal life. We plead for strength and patience, so that suffering will not strip away our hope. All glory and authority to the one who suffered every sin of the world to be taken into his own body. Amen.

Earth, Heaven

It wasn’t a fist-shaking, jaw-thrusting rant at heaven. But I doubted the goodness of God.

It wasn’t a low opinion of him either, really. But I was praying, and I was praying words of the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy. Holy, said three times, speaks of the perfection, the perfect goodness, of God. When I reached the third holy, I was uneasy. I lofted a question to God: "Really?"

1. Mud everywhere.

In fairness to me, I see a lot of crap on a daily basis. It’s everywhere. And I even try to avert my eyes so I don’t see crap that I don’t have to see. I skip a lot of movies.

In my work as a lawyer, even among the best people of our (local) society, things aren’t right. There are people who eat delicious hors d’oeuvres in members-only country clubs while tuxedo-ed artists play soothing music on gleaming grand pianos. They have status and wealth that others envy. Their future comfort seems promised by stock portfolios and homes and overflowing bank accounts. They drive past sweating, food-stamp needing plastic-bottle pickers; they don't see them through the shiny windows of the air-conditioned, leather-seated luxury of their brilliantly engineered, valet-polished cars. Some are lawyers who use their tax-payer funded lawsuits to ruin lesser people, for no measurable benefit to society. They stand for the rest. If I were in their place, I would be them.

I look at them, and I look to God, and I say, "really"?

Not, of course, that I’m a jewel.

Maybe I’m like a man who has lived under months of rainfall. There’s mud in the streets, there’s mud on the sidewalks, there’s mud in the parking garages, and, when I go into my house, mud goes in with me. I can’t imagine a world without mud.

2. Cracking through clouds.

I forget what it’s like to jet away from a rainy climate. The ascent at the end of the runway presses you gently into your seat as the rain-soaked airport falls away, and soon you’re lost in clouds. Soon after that, you crack the sky above the clouds, and the brilliant sun shines down on you, and it shines back up from the layer of clouds below you. The brightness gladdens your spirit, and you gaze at mystic fields and fantastic towers of cloud-architecture that goes on forever.

3. Visions.

It’s good to remember people who have had spiritual cloud-cracking experiences.

Like Moses, who asked to see the glory of God. God allowed it, but he allowed Moses to see him only from behind; the glory of his face would have destroyed mortal Moses. Moses saw from a cleft of a rock.

Like righteous, ruined Job, who took his gripe to God. God gave him a vision of God's own glory. Amazed, Job covered his lip and took back his complaint. The fact that he covered his lip was significant. Lepers in Old Testament times, as they walked, had to cover their lip and call out "Unclean! Unclean!"

Like Isaiah the prophet, who was in the temple, and he saw God in heaven. God’s robe reached down and its hem filled the temple. The vision was overwhelming. ""Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!" (Isaiah 6:5 (NRSV).)

Like Paul, who took beatings, whippings, stonings, ship-wreckings, starvation, exposure to harsh weather, imprisonment, ridicule, all for the sake of spreading the Kingdom of Heaven. But one day, he was carried up into the "third heaven". He "heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell." (2 Corinthians 12:4 (NRSV).)

Like the apostle John. He was at the end of his life, starving on the Island of Patmos. There, he had the glorious vision that is the book of Revelation. And part of what John saw was the worship and praise and honor of God that takes place in heaven.

4. On earth as it is in heaven.

It’s rare to break though the clouds as Moses, Job, Isaiah, Paul, John, and others did. At least, it’s rare to do it in that way. But we can praise our God, and then our thoughts and words accord with heaven. In heaven, all of present hardships and privations fade like a dream fades to one who wakes up.

On earth, we need better eyes. And when I say "we", I mean "I". I would like a dream like Jacob had, with angels ascending to heaven and descending to earth, and God next to me. I would like to wake up and say, like Jacob, "Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!" (Genesis 28:16 (NRSV).)

The seraphs that Isaiah saw cried this to each other: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." (NRSV.) It would be good to know the glory of God around us.

5. Prayer (by Reginald Heber):

     Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
     Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
     Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
     God in three persons, blessed Trinity!

     Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee,
     casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
     cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
     which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.

     Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee,
     though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
     only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
     perfect in power, in love and purity.

     Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
     All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth and sky and sea.
     Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
     God in three persons, blessed Trinity.

Furnaces, Bones

Evil learns.

When the Nazis started to mass-murder the Jews, they made soldiers or police battalions line the Jews along trenches and fire bullets into the back of the heads of these men, women, and children. The trenches took the corpses.

But there wasn’t enough land for all of the trenches for all of the corpses that the Nazis wanted to make.

And when a soldier fired a bullet into the back of a head, blood and brain and bits of skull blew back on him. That added to the demoralization of the killers.

The Nazis learned to have their servants fire the bullets into the spines in the back of the necks of their victims. This made less blowback.

But this method, too, was superseded. The Nazis made gas chambers. And trenches were superseded by the furnaces that sent the ashes of Jews into the skies over Dachau and Auschwitz and other death capitals.

      My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
        Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
      O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
         and by night, but find no rest. [Psalm 22:1-2 (NRSV).]

1. Nick-of-time stories.
 
Nick-of-time stories are popular – all is lost, but the hero bursts in at the last moment to make things right. Some are in the Bible.

The Egyptian army is bearing down on the Israelites. God parts the Red Sea to save his fleeing people.

God is about to rain firey hell on Sodom, where Lot lives. Angels in the form of men urge him to go. But he tarries. Finally, they literally take him by the hand to lead him out of the city. Then the destruction comes.

The Assyrian army surrounds Jerusalem. The Assyrian general taunts the people listening to him from the city walls. He says their God sent him to crush them. He tells them to come out to him, lest, holed up in their city without supplies, they eat their own dung and drink their own piss. In the night, and angel of God kills 185,000 in the the Assyrian camp. The Assyrians withdraw. At home, the Assyria king is assassinated by his sons.

Jesus is sleeping in a boat and his disciples are with him. A storm sweeps upon them, but Jesus keeps sleeping. When the boat is about to go down, they awaken Jesus. He rebukes the storm, and the sea becomes calm. (Then he rebukes his disciples.)

2. After-the-nick-of-time stories.
But the Bible also has stories where the last moment goes by, and there is no rescue, but things turn out well anyway.

In the book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are Jewish officials in the court of King Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon. The order goes out that all must worship the king’s golden image when they hear the music of the"horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble" (NRSV). Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego refuse to worship the image.

So they are condemned to die in a blazing furnace. Men throwing them into the furnace themselves die from the fire. No rescue comes at the last moment.

Rescue comes after these men are thrown into the furnace. Looking into the furnace, people see Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walking around, and even their clothes are not singed. And there is a fourth man with them.

The children of Israel saw themselves in Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Both pieces of the split kingdoms of Israel and Judah had been conquered; the people had been taken far away from their homeland. But, after this annihilation of their kingdoms, they were restored to their homeland by a benevolent king, and they began again as a united country.

Israel in that time was exactly the vision of the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones. Skeletons reassembled themselves, sinews connected the bones, flesh and skin and hair grew over the skeletons, and the bodies stood up.

The after-the-last moment theme continues in the New Testament. Martha and Mary and Lazarus are friends of Jesus. Lazarus becomes sick, and Martha and Mary send a message to Jesus and plead with him to come so that Lazarus will not die. Jesus tarries. Lazarus dies. Martha and Mary are devastated.

Grieving Martha acknowledges to Jesus that she trusts that Lazarus will rise in resurrection of the dead on the last day. But Jesus immediately calls Lazarus forth from his tomb and restores him to his sisters.

The Gospels themselves are after-the-last-moment narratives. The resurrected Jesus appears, unrecognized, to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They tell him about their hope that Jesus would redeem Israel, but he had been crucified. Jesus opens their eyes, and they recognize him, alive and with them.

3. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnaces of Dachau.

I am uncertain that I have any right to write about the Holocaust. But whatever its other effects, the Holocaust led to the restoration of Israel in Palestine. After the Holocaust, the Jewish state became a 20^th Century expression of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace. The skeletal survivors of the death camps made the scattered skeletons in Ezekiel’s vision live again in a resurrected Israel.

The prophet Ezekiel had a wife whom he delighted in. God told him that she would die, and she did. So when he saw the bones in the valley reassemble and rise, I suppose that Ezekiel must have thought about more than his helpless nation.

I think about the millions of victims of the Holocaust. I might be unorthodox, or I might not be. But God is God. On the last day, I would rather be a Jewish victim than a Christian predator. I want to believe that the fourth man who was in the furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was with the Holocaust victims in their hour of death.

4. Dream.

I slept between beginning and ending this essay. I dreamed that my mom was young, happy, and alive. It was a good dream, until I remembered that I had gone to her funeral. Then I was frightened, because I thought that I had lost my mind.

5. Prayer.

Lord, I am not the first to say: I believe. Please help my unbelief. Amen.

Shit Going On

A helpless man on his back foams from his mouth. Another man’s legs make repetitive hopping motions. He too is on his back. A young boy’s arms spasm as if he’s frantically kneading dough. But his hands reach nothing, and he’s not controlling them. A little boy’s body is still, and it will be so forever.

These are victims of sarin nerve gas attacks, shown in videos from Damascus, Syria .

These adults and children are mourned. But now they are also sad exhibits in the debate about what America should or should not do in Syria. And inevitably they will become exhibits in an argument against God: "If God is all powerful and all loving . . .."

1. The book of Job.

In the biblical book of Job, after one tragedy after another crushes Job, after Job’s righteous friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar try to argue him into accepting reponsibility, after Job complains to God, Job has a vision. It’s a terrifying, amazing, mysterious, and beautiful vision, and afterward Job knows that God is in the right.

To crudely summarize that vision: There’s shit going on that you don’t know.

2. The book of Revelation.

The book of Revelation is similar. It’s written to Christian communities that were suffering and wondering why, if they were in the right and God is all-powerful.

And John writes of stars being swept from heaven and of angels pouring bowls full of plagues that poison first the oceans and then the other waters of the earth. He writes of four living creatures, each with six wings and eyes all around and inside, who sing God’s praises.

And John writes of war in heaven and the great dragon thrown down to earth, where he goes to war against the saints. And John writes of a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, crowned with twelve stars, whom the dragon tries to sweep away by spewing a flood of water from his mouth, but the ground opens and swallows the flood.

Yeah, to summarize again: There’s shit going on that you don’t know.

3. There’s shit going on.

And there’s shit going on in our lives, too.

It’s a different scale than what’s described in Job and Revelation, but it’s still shit. Jobs lost; loved ones who suffer; loved ones who die; painful, lingering illnesses; hunger; injustice; children of caring, careful parents in prison for life. People who wake up in Damascus, dress their children, eat breakfast, and die before noon.

4. More to the story.

The book of Job doesn’t end with Job putting his hand over his mouth and saying that God is in the right. It ends with Job restored to wealth, long life, and children.

The book of Revelation doesn’t end with plagues, dragons, firey destruction, or war and flight. After those come a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem – peace and joy for the righteous.

So, to summarize: There’s shit going on you don’t know, but everything will be alright.

So be patient.

5. Patience ain’t easy.

But patience isn’t easy. In the sixth chapter of Revelation, martyrs under God’s alter are impatient to know when they will be avenged. They’re told to rest, because the slaughter of the saints is not finished.

And it isn’t easy for us. It isn’t easy when you lose your job, and you lose hope of finding a new one.

It isn’t easy when you succumb to foolishness and sin, and you bear your shame in front of your family.

It isn’t easy when you body or mind starts to fail, and what you once could do easily you can’t do, and you know that you’ll never do it again.

It isn’t easy when your foes are strong, and they have seemingly infinite resources to oppose you, to win not by right but by might.

6. Let’s not speak piously about faith.

And let’s not blame the victim. Let’s not intone piously about only having faith. If we do, we condescend to great ones who wrote great words. For example:

Psalm 22 starts with this wretched lament:

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
     and by night, but find no rest. [NRSV.]

Some psalms start like a dirge, but they end hopefully. Like Psalm 6. But not Psalm 88.

1 O Lord, God of my salvation,
    when, at night, I cry out in your presence,
2 let my prayer come before you;
    incline your ear to my cry.
　
3 For my soul is full of troubles,
    and my life draws near to Sheol.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;
   I am like those who have no help,
5 like those forsaken among the dead,
    like the slain that lie in the grave,
    like those whom you remember no more,
    for they are cut off from your hand.
6 You have put me in the depths of the Pit,
    in the regions dark and deep.
7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
     and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah

　
8 You have caused my companions to shun me;
    you have made me a thing of horror to them.
    I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
9 my eye grows dim through sorrow.
    Every day I call on you, O Lord;
    I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
     Do the shades rise up to praise you?
          Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
     or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
     or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness?
　
13 But I, O Lord, cry out to you;
     in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 O Lord, why do you cast me off?
     Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Wretched and close to death from my youth up,
      I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
     your dread assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long;
     from all sides they close in on me.
18 You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me;
     my companions are in darkness.[NRSV]

7. "I know that my Redeemer lives!"

Horror and hope is a subject that the Bible speaks about with great beauty, so I find myself quoting long passages of it, which is not my habit. But who spoke more eloquently or powerfully than Job? Here he speaks to his righteous friends, who blame him for the misfortunes that have torn him like wild dogs.

2 "How long will you torment me,
    and break me in pieces with words?
3 These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
    are you not ashamed to wrong me?
4 And even if it is true that I have erred,
    my error remains with me.
5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me,
    and make my humiliation an argument against me,
6 know then that God has put me in the wrong,
    and closed his net around me.
7 Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I am not answered;
    I call aloud, but there is no justice.
8 He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass,
    and he has set darkness upon my paths.
9 He has stripped my glory from me,
    and taken the crown from my head.
10 He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
     he has uprooted my hope like a tree.
11 He has kindled his wrath against me,
     and counts me as his adversary.
12 His troops come on together;
     they have thrown up siegeworks against me,
     and encamp around my tent.
 13 "He has put my family far from me,
     and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
14 My relatives and my close friends have failed me;
15 the guests in my house have forgotten me;
     my serving girls count me as a stranger;
     I have become an alien in their eyes.
16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
     I must myself plead with him.
17 My breath is repulsive to my wife;
     I am loathsome to my own family.
18 Even young children despise me;
     when I rise, they talk against me.
19 All my intimate friends abhor me,
     and those whom I loved have turned against me.
20 My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh,
     and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21 Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends,
     for the hand of God has touched me!
22 Why do you, like God, pursue me,
     never satisfied with my flesh?
23 "O that my words were written down!
     O that they were inscribed in a book!
24 O that with an iron pen and with lead
     they were engraved on a rock forever!
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
     and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
26 and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
     then in my flesh I shall see God,
27 whom I shall see on my side,
     and my eyes shall behold, and not another. [NRSV.]

8. The last word.

The prayer of John at the beginning of the book of Revelation is the last word of history. It is also the last word of this essay.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, who made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. [Revelation 1:5-6 (NRSV).]

What's Up With Husband and Wives and Working and Eating?

Paul writes about husbands and wives in Ephesians 5:21-33. A lot of people hate the part about wives. It seems to encourage subjugation of women.

But the hated passage might be lighter than often thought. The reason is simple.

The part about wives is for wives. It's not for husbands to confront wives  with. It's for wives to consider and, as they see fit, to apply. And the part about husbands is for husbands.

But you be the judge.

1. The passage.

This passage launches with the husband and wife's mutual duties. Then it briefly counsels wives. The greatest and last part of this passage counsels (mostly) husbands:
Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind – yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, because we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband. [NRSV.]
2. The shifting audience of the passage.
     
I'm not married, but this seems right for a husband: to live and breath part 1 (mutual duty) and part 3 (husband’s duties). These would apply to husbands.

Part 2, the wife’s duties, is not the husband's business.  It doesn't apply to him. Unless a husband has a special ministry of judging others, it serves him no purpose. The part in the prior sentence about the "special ministry of judging others" was meant ironically.

The wife’s duty is to examine part 2, to interpret it, to decide if it applies to her, and, as she sees fit, to adopt it as her practice. A wise woman doesn't need anyone else's theological pathfinding skills to find her way in this. Though like all of us, she's free to reach out.

3. The guiding principle.

The principle is simple: the Bible is written for all people at all times, but not all parts pertain to every person. And a part might pertain to a person at one time, but not at another. For the student of the Word, discernment and the Holy Spirit are the indispensable helpers.

And, subject to the  Holy Spirit, the narrower principle is this: the Bible wasn't written as a tool to hector people with. It wasn't written to help the husband to control his wife, or for a wife to control her husband. It was written to bring both under the control of God. Husband and wife need to reflect on how God wants them to treat their spouse.

Since the husband controls what he does, he needs to seek God to know his duty to his wife. Since the wife controls what she does, she needs to seek God to know her duty to her husband. And this seeking doesn't end in an answer. It's a conversation. The conversation involves, but is not limited to, the life story of the husband and the wife, the Holy Spirit, prayer, and many parts of the Bible. It neither begin nor ends in Ephesians.

4. The guiding principle in another context: rich and poor.

And it’s a principle that makes sense in other contexts, too.

For example, Proverbs is full of instructions and warnings to the lazy.
The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing. [Proverbs 20:4 (KJV).] Or: How long will you lie there, O lazybones?
   When will you rise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
   a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
   and want, like an armed warrior. [Proverbs 6:9-11 (NRSV).] Or: The lazy person buries a [fork] in the dish,
and will not even bring it back to the mouth. [Proverbs 19:24 (NRSV)(Where I write "fork", the original wording is "hand".)]
But the Bible is also full of admonitions to the rich and powerful about the poor. For example: You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits. [Exodus 23:6 (NRSV).] Or: You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God. [Leviticus 19:10 (NRSV).] Or: 'I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ [Matthew 25:43-45.]
I don’t think that the proverbs were written to excuse the rich or the powerful when they overlook the poor. I don’t think that the passages from Exodus, Leviticus, or Matthew were written for the poor to use to hector the rich and the powerful. I think the proverbs are God’s special word for the poor or the lazy; I think the other passages are God’s special word to persons of means about their duty to the poor.

5. A contradiction to the principle?

Having said that, here’s this. Some would say it goes against my point.

Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. [2 Thessalonians 3:10.]

 6. Maybe not.

But let me say three things.

First, context matters. And that context shows (arguably) that Paul is addressing those who are "unwilling to work".
For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. [2 Thessalonians 3:10-12.] Second, in another context, Paul says things opposite to and similar to the 2^nd Thessalonians passage about working and eating: Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. [Galatians 6:2 (NRSV).] And: For all must carry their own loads. [Galatians 6:5 (NRSV).] These seems paradoxical and contradictory. Unless, three verses apart, Paul addresses different people.

7.   But maybe.

But third, I accept that you plausibly could reject explanations 1 and 2.

Yet the larger idea is that scripture is written for all people at all times, and for particular people at particular times. Maybe in Thessalonians 3:10, God addresses me, and people like me, and he says, "Make your neat principles. I am God. And I burst out of neat principles."

Amen.

Lonely

Many years ago, I knew a woman who was married a long time, and she was faithful to her husband until the day that she died, almost.

She longed for more than what she had. Then she thought that she had found what she longed for. It was a man her age who had similar interests. She was a teacher; he was a principal. She liked to golf. So did he.

And he would call her on the phone and read psalms to her. He would ask her what she thought that one psalm or another meant. And he would praise the beauty of the psalms.

They had an affair. It lasted a short time. Then he left her and started up with a PTA president.

In the short time that this woman had an affair with this man, she became deeply attached to him. He walked away, but her attachment to him stayed. She even stalked him. In addition to the attachment, another bi-product of the affair was her unbearable shame. She tried to take her life.

It had been her practice to pray every day. After the affair, when she went to pray, all she could say to God was "I’m sorry."

Within two-or-three years, she was dead. She did not reach the age of retirement before she died. On her deathbed, she confessed to loneliness.

Predators who clothe themselves in godly-seeming garments will always find it easy to take down women and men who long for God but don’t know how to find him, or don’t know that he is what they long for.

The rich find it easy to take down men or women who long for riches. (It is apparently an old saying that if you marry for money, you end up paying for it.)

Or someone might long for a highly-clever person. (I suspect that Russell Brand’s easy wit is what makes him to many women irresistible.) Or a beautiful person. Or a learned person. Or brave. Or famous. The ors could add up.

Statistics on marriage and divorce are kept by the Centers for Disease Control. I mention that without particular comment. The Centers for Disease Control tell us that every year, 6.8 people get married for every thousand persons in America; and 3.6 persons get divorced.

If I understand those statistics, more than half of all American marriages end up in family court. But a broad statistic like that says little. The first line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I've never been married, so I can't say. Nor can I judge any marriage that fails. I know for a fact that if I had married when I was younger, I would not have stayed married. That’s true no matter who I might have married. I was just too selfish.

That said, I believe the ability to live with longing and a willingness for that longing to be unsatisfied while we live is a gift from above. So is patience to channel our longing in a virtuous direction where we don’t necessarily get what we want, but we are at least somewhat satisfied with what we get.

When we burn for something, but we resist it for righteousness’s sake, maybe the smoke from that burning is a fragrance pleasing to God.

To this woman, this love affair drew her like a crackling bonfire on a winter’s night. While it lasted, it was a joy to her. It was less important to her lover. To him, discarding it was like flinging away a cigarette while reaching for another.

Let me say one last thing about the woman of this story. Please remember that she said that all she could pray after the affair was "I’m sorry."

I heard that from her in the time of her dying. Years after, I remembered that she had said that, and I thought of Jesus’s story in Luke 18, about the Pharisee and the tax collector. Both were in the temple. The Pharisee thanked God that he himself was so virtuous, not like other men, and, in particular, not like this tax collector. But the tax collector stood far off. He could not look up. In shame, he cried to God, "Have mercy on me, a sinner!" Jesus said that one of those men was justified before God, but not the other.

And these are words from Psalm 51:"The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." (NRSV.)

I regret that I did not at the time think of this story, and this psalm, to share with this woman.

But I hope that, one day, she will hear them from the lips of an angel.

The Right Question

This was the morning of studying small children. I saw them in Trader Joe’s; I saw them in Von’s; I saw them in a parking lot. They were with their parents.

And they were adorable. So cute. So happy. So protected.

One little girl was with her sister and her father. Father and daughter were talking, and the only part of the conversation that I heard was this:

Little girl: "I’m not a sidekick. She’s a sidekick." (Pointing to her sister.)

Father: "Not sidekick. Psychic." (All adults grin.)

1. Theology lurking.

There’s theology lurking here somewhere.

Some of my friends who are not believers hold a theological magic lamp. Its genii  banishes any notion of the existence of God. That magic lamp is evil in the world. If God exists and God is good, why does that evil exist?

I am mortal and limited in my understanding, like they are. So ultimately they should take up an issue this big with God. If they don’t wish to go to God with their accusation, then they might find someone who has really, really suffered, and who believes. And they should ask that person, "Why"?

But here is a limited answer from a limited man:

You are asking the wrong question.


2. Why is there good in the world?

Because the better question is this: if power is irresistible, and if power corrupts, and if some folk have an almost supernatural ability to accumulate power, why is there good in the world?

Why can these lovely children be fed and protected and loved by prosperous, safe parents?


3. The difference a question makes.

I heard of a scholar, a theologian, who studied God and evil. He spent years peering into grotesque events. After years of investigation, he ceased to believe.

I can’t judge him, but maybe that was bound to happen.

Maybe Paul had his reasons when he said in Philippians 4:4-9 (NRSV):

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Maybe Paul had his reasons when he said in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NRSV):
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
In a world where circumstances and powers and principalities conspire to steal away confidence in God, this habit of thanksgiving shelters faith.

Not that our thinking can add or subtract from God. He is not Tinkerbell.

But Hamlet is a theological play, and that theological play says this in act 2, scene 2: "[T]here is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Thinking affects belief. It affects how we know the world to be; that affects our ability to see what is within the cloud that surrounds God.


4. Easier for some than others.

It’s easier for me to give this answer, sitting in my office munching crusty french bread and sipping cold water, than it is for a woman sitting at the sterile bedside of her infant who’s lungs are failing. Or a holocaust survivor. Or a man without food for himself and his family. I cannot judge these people if they cannot believe, or if they cannot give thanks.

And maybe it’s easier for me to say what I say than it was for Paul himself. Or maybe not. But Paul did say these things, and in his life he was blinded, shipwrecked, beaten, whipped, stoned and left for dead, starved, exposed in harsh weather, and imprisoned. Yet he believed.

Thank you, Lord, for Paul. He inspires me.


5. What to do.

But the fact is that it’s easier to believe when your mind is not seized with suffering, as some people’s minds are.

So it’s right, first, to pray, as Jesus said, that we not come into a time of trial.(Mark 4:38 (NRSV).) He said this to his disciples in Gethsemane, as he knew he was about to be arrested, tortured, and crucified. Cruel circumstances have made the hopefulness of better people than me whither. Although for others, it has increased their faith.

Second, it is our missionary duty to help those who suffer. This theology regards the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) as a sacrament.

And we need to remember to be grateful to God in good times. We should remember to be grateful to see adorable, happy, safe, well-fed children. If we can’t do that, we have no hope when trouble comes.

God Ain’t Easy

Lincoln knew. In his Second Inaugural Address, he spoke of the Civil War’s bloody opponents:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

1. As then, so now.

I worship the Lord, like some of my conservative friends. Liberal that I am, I believe that for several months in 2012, every time someone said "God bless America", whether they knew it or not, they were praying for the defeat of Mitt Romney. My religious-conservative friends might think the opposite.

The Lord, as I understand him, takes the side of the poor, and he is pleased when the government of our country helps to control AIDS in poor countries, and he is pleased when the government of our country helps the legions of our hungry to buy food. But some of my friends know that the Lord said to help the poor and feed the hungry, but they point out, quite rightly, that he never said that the government should be a means of that.

I might be right or I might be wrong; likewise my friends might be right or wrong.

But right or wrong, it’s safe to say that all of us are so vastly thick in our knowledge of the depth and height of breadth and beauty and glory and love of the Lord that compared to what we don’t know, what we do know is very small. And what little we know is often wrong.

 2. Not looking, not seeing.

We like to know things. If mysteries don’t provoke us to seek answers, then they discomfort us. They make us feel small, and we don’t like that. So if we don’t chase knowledge of the Unknowable, we shrink the Unknowable to a size that suits our minds, we compress the glory of the Lord to a shape that fits our ideas . We don’t plead with God to impress his image on our souls; we look for his image in a mirror.

Idolatry is a way to shrink the Lord to the size of our minds. The ancient Israelites made a golden calf that they could see and touch, a golden calf with finite qualities. Know the calf: know the Lord.

3. The mystery.

Meanwhile, Moses was on the mountain, learning from God how to make burnt offerings, the smoke of which would rise into the sky, where God resided above the Israelites, un-seeable, largely inscrutable.

Moses pleaded to see God; God put Moses in the cleft of a rock, and he put his hand over the cleft while he passed, so Moses would not see God’s face and be destroyed. Moses saw only God’s back, and he lived.
 

To Job, God was in the wrong. Job accused God. Then God revealed something of his vastness to Job, and Job put his hand over his own mouth.
 
Sometimes desperate men of God have lifted this deep question:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?/ Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? [Psalm 22:1 (NRSV).]

This, in fact, is the mystery that, in one form or another, unbelievers sometime consider the summit of proof against a loving, powerful God. The lack of a satisfying answer to this question is, to them, the answer to every question about God.

 

Jesus, as a man, is accessible to us; but, like God, he is deeper than our understanding. And, as with God, we tend to project our ideas and attitudes onto him.

 

4. Unexamined ideas.

The glib is the enemy of the deep. We often fail to examine received wisdom. That’s as true of me as it is of anybody. But since I’m ignorant of my own error (if I knew it was error, I wouldn’t cling to it), I’ll pick on other people.

I learned as a young man that salvation was simple. Just say "Jesus Christ, come into my heart", or some version of that, and salvation is a done deal. Some of my friends believe that today. It’s their interpretation of what Jesus said to Nicodemus, about being "born again":

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." [John 3:3 (KJV).]

I wonder how many of my friends who have produced a child think that birth is easy?

I won’t say that there’s an easy answer in the Bible about what it takes to be saved; I admit that if you're willing to isolate some verses, the answer can seem easy. There are arguments on the side of easy grace. But people who believe in that might reckon the parts of the Bible that suggest that salvation ain’t easy.

 

For example:

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. [Philippians 2:12-13 (NRSV).]

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation – if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. (1 Peter 2:2-3 (NRSV).]

[B]ut those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. [Luke 20:35 (NRSV).]

 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." [Matthew 24:41-46 (NRSV).]

And "If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinners?" [1 Peter 4:18 (NRSV).]

I’m not trying to plant panic. I’m just taking the wisdom received from some preachers and from people who approach us in parking lots with invitations to be "saved" and saying that they might be inviting us to adopt a simplistic, if not an entirely wrong-headed, understanding of God.

And I'm not pretending that the passages that I've quoted are a complete answer. There are comforting passages about salvation. Rightly or wrongly, I think that much depends on who you are. Rightly or wrongly, I think that God means to comfort the broken hearted and those who struggle and those who suffer; he means to goad toward love those who prosper and think their prosperity is for themselves only.

5. Paths to take.

"[W]hoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." True for the audience of the book of Hebrews; true for us. We are called to seek the Lord.

To seek the Lord, we can test what we know about him by reading the inspired words of those who knew the Lord better than we do – the Bible.

Sometimes I wonder, too, if prayer isn’t more important than reading the Bible. For most of history most people could not read; that's still true in large parts of the world today. But almost everybody can talk to God.

Good preaching lifts the soul.
      
God is love; to love is to know God.

Or maybe, because God is deep and vast, there is no one way and no one combination of ways to journey toward knowledge of him.

6. Journey.

But it is a journey. No journey is more worthwhile. People spend years learning law, medicine, music, football, poker, Mark Twain, or art. People spend decades learning their spouse and discovering their children. These are all good things.

But none of them is, by itself, a path to a joy beyond our imaginations, which we’re called pursue piece by piece, piece by piece, day by day, day by day. The journey can start at any time; it should end when God says.

And this I also trust: God helps along the way.

7. Prayer.

Lord, please un-satisfy us with our present knowledge of you, and make us yearn to know you better. Give us the means to know you. Along the way, call to us toward the direction we should go. Reward our seeking with understanding. Give us strength to persist until we come to where you want us to be. In Christ’s name, Amen.

A Prayer for American Christians

Father, pity your Christian children in America.
Have mercy upon us when don’t do your will.
Have sympathy when we don’t do what you tell us to do.
Do not punish us; be lavish with the gift of your Spirit.

We are not Christians because we are better than others.
We are Christians because you moved in our lives.
We are not virtuous because we were born virtuous.
Our virtue is a gift of your Spirit.

You teach us virtue.
You teach us, by Paul, that we must not boast.
You teach us, by Jesus, that we serve you when we serve the weak.
You teach us, by Jesus, to love our neighbors as ourselves.

But we don’t love our neighbors as ourselves.
We may despise our neighbors, as if we could judge them.
We treat our Muslim neighbors badly.
We stop their architecture of worship.

Lord, I trust that you cherish our Muslim neighbors.
You are the Maker; you made us all.
An artist loves his art, and you love the work of you hand.
And Ishmael, like Isaac, was made by you.

Lord, precept by precept, day by day, etch your Word upon our hearts.
By your spirit, put your image upon our souls.
Teach us to love what you love, cherish what you cherish.
Teach us to cherish our Muslim neighbors as you cherish them.

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. [Isaiah 64:6.]

Have pity, Lord. Remember that we are leaves in the wind.

In Jesus’s name, Amen.

Boston

People can have a low opinion of God.

Night is about Elie Wiesel's experiences as a Jewish child in a German death camp. There is a moment in Night when Elie Wiesel rejects God. But when I read this memoir many years ago, I wasn’t clear about the nature of his rejection. I couldn’t tell if he stopped believing in God, or if he decided that God was such a – excuse me – shitty god that he wasn’t worth regarding.

I think of Elie Wiesel when I think of the terrible events at the Boston Marathon – a bombing that killed three people, including an eight-year-old child. The bombs wounded over one-hundred by-standers. People were mangled. People lost legs.

How many of the wounded survivors, how many of their loved ones, now think of God as a shitty god?

1. I can’t judge.

If they do, I can’t judge them. I can’t judge Elie Wiesel. I have not suffered in a death camp. I have not lost a limb. I myself have been on the edge of annihilation, but I never went over the edge.

2. The nature of God: perplexity.

I rarely wonder if God exists. I sometimes wonder about his nature.

The nature of the world invites wonder about the nature of God. No-one can be completely ignorant of evil. Holocausts. Cancer. Children who die. People who starve. Mental illness. Murder. Injustice. Slander. Selfish people who prosper. Kind people who lose their jobs, their homes, their dignity.

3. My hard times.

I have, like I said, never suffered like Elie Wiesel, or like many of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. I’ve never had a child ripped away by death.

But I have had my share of anguish. As a young man, I was career-proud. I was hopeful of doing great things in the law; I hoped one day to become a judge, maybe even a judge of a high court. I intended to leave a big footprint on life.

I worked hard. I was so confident in my work-ethic and in my smarts that I shunned the games I saw among many of my colleagues – the backbiting, the sabotaging.

I thrived for a time. But a supervisor was put over me who thwarted me. She made my work a misery. In a year’s time under her authority, I lost my dynamism and became a listless worker. Unbearably fatigued, I resigned and limped to another job. It took a long time to recover.

I went mad many years ago; before I regained sanity, I found myself in panicked flight from a vast Satanic conspiracy that seemed so widespread that I could not eat. I could not eat because everywhere I went, these demonically-clever conspirators seemed somehow to poison my food and control my mind.

I have represented clients who deserved to win their cases because they were innocent or in the right. But they have had victory plucked away from them by a partisan judge or by a jury that was proud to afflict a victim of police violence and prosecutorial overreach, or who rejected mountains of proof that my clients were in the right. Please trust me: if you care for your clients, and I usually do, this bleeds your spirit.

I don’t compare my suffering – such as it has been – to the suffering of others. But I’m no stranger to injustice or fate.

4. Some reasons why I hope in the goodness of God.

But it seems to me that there is reason, in the midst of a world of evil events, to hope in a God who is good.

For example, Emil Kapaun was an American chaplain in the Korean War. He was captured. In captivity, he risked his life to steal food from the guards, to feed his starving fellow-P.O.W.’s. He sold his watch to buy a blanket, and from the blanket he made socks for prisoners in the freezing weather who had none. He encouraged others. He did such things until he died of cold and hunger.

The night after I read about Emil Kapaun, I wrestled with the idea of a god who somehow knows the billions of people living and dead -- knows them, knows everything about them, a god of vast love. From my bed, I asked "What are you God?" And suddenly I remembered Emil Kapaun, as if that were the answer. God is the God who made Emil Kapaun – made him alive and made him good; made him manifest the spirit of his maker. Maybe I can’t understand an infinite God, but I can comprehend him as expressed in his godly servant. And the expression of God in Emil Kapaun reveals a god who is good.

Another example: when I lost my mind, I also lost my confidence in my salvation. I became convinced that God had rejected me, and I believed that God was right to do so. But after a time, I had dreams that God had forgiven me. The dreams were joyful, but I did not believe them when I awoke.

Then, one day, I was in church. I had until then shunned the bread and wine of communion because of my estrangement from God; but that day, I took it. And God opened my eyes through the communion. I have described this experience in a prior post. It was on that day that I regained the hope of salvation. To believe that you are lost to God, and then to discover that you aren’t, is powerful proof of the goodness of God.

And the Bible is full of urgings to do right, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy, to care for the poor, to care for the lowly, to care for the hopeless, to care for the sick, to care for the infirm, to care for the outsider. No God who wasn’t good would be so determined to make us good.

5. A desperate grip.

But my conviction of the goodness of God does not come only from such evidence of his goodness. It comes also from a need to believe. That need is greatest when times are worst.

Pain comes regularly and in doses big enough to try my patience. The worst of those are times that I feel like I could not carry on if I did not believe in a loving and caring God. On bad days, I cling to hope in a God who will one day put things right. Days like that make me cling to his goodness with the grip of a desperate man, a man who believes that without the hope in a good God, there is no hope at all in an evil world.

Prayer and War on the Korean Peninsula

Kim Jong Un is a third-generation dictator of North Korea. He makes me think of that saying: The first generation earns; the second generation learns; the third generation burns. Mr. Kim's privileged upbringing might make him wildly detached from reality. And dangerously likely to bring burning to his corner of the word.

1. Danger.

The news magazine The Economist says this:

Even by its own aggressive standards, North Korea’s actions over the past couple of weeks have been extraordinary. Kim Jong Un, the country’s young dictator, has threatened the United States with nuclear Armageddon, promising to rain missiles on mainland America and military bases in Hawaii and Guam; declared a "state of war" with South Korea; announced that he would restart a plutonium-producing reactor at its Yongbyon nuclear site, while enriching uranium to build more nuclear weapons; and barred South Korean managers from entering the Kaesong industrial complex, almost the only instance of North-South co-operation. All this comes after the regime set off a nuclear test, its third, in February. Tensions are the worst on the peninsula since 1994, when North Korea and America were a hair’s breadth from war.
Things easily could get out-of-hand. What might a delusional upstart do with a fanatical million-man army and artillery trained on populous Seoul, the capital city of South Korea? There’s no telling.

We can’t control a tyrant who might be seduced by megalomania into mass murder. But we can do our part. Because war on the Korean peninsula would spread death and suffering deep and wide, time spent in prayer is time well spent.

2. The first prayer: guidance.

How do you pray against a Korean holocaust? Do you pray for removal of the agent of danger? God could do that. Do you pray for his temperance? God could do that, too.

But maybe the first thing to do is to ask God what to pray for and hope in his prayer-guidance. Maybe prayer begins with listening for the still, quiet voice of the Holy Spirit, perhaps a mental hesitation that says, "Not that way; this way." Prayers are more potent when they petition for the will of God to be done. I don't doubt that God can direct our prayers according to his will.

3. The second prayer: raising an army.

It’s an old joke that if you are given three wishes, the first thing you should wish for is more wishes. But maybe that works in prayer.

When I pray for Barack Obama, I often pray for God to raise up more people to pray for him, for his wisdom, and for protection for him and for his family. And, you know? After I had prayed that for some time, after the 2012 election, conservative Evangelical-leader Franklin Graham publicly called for Evangelicals to pray for their president.

Did I have anything to do with that? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly not alone; maybe God chose to hear my prayers combined with the prayers of many others and did, in fact, raise an Evangelical army of pray-ors for the president.

So pray for God to stir other people to pray, so that blood won’t be poured out on the Korean peninsula.

3. The third prayer: blessings.

Maybe God will have directed your prayers in one way or another. If so, good. But if you do not feel otherwise guided, what harm can come if you pray for blessings?

Pray for peace.

Pray for the one-to-two-hundred thousand political prisoners who suffer in cruel conditions in Korean concentration camps.

And for the millions of farmers groaning in hopeless labor on collective farms in communist Korea.

Pray for light to come to the dark place that is North Korea. Pray for the North Korean people, for their freedom of self-determination, their freedom of mind, their freedom of speech, and their freedom of worship. They are a people severely oppressed. It's a crime in North Korea to sing any song that doesn't extol its leader.

Pray for safety, prosperity, and godliness for the people of South Korea.

It seems right to pray for blessings for a people, more than to pray for harm to any person, however odious and cruel that person might be. I would rather intercede for blessing than judgment.

5. The fourth prayer: guidance.

I suggested that this cycle of prayer begin with a prayer for guidance. Perhaps it should end, also, with a prayer for guidance – guidance for leaders who must make choices about the turmoil on the Korean peninsula, and about the turmoil in the world caused by that.

Pray for the president, and for his military leaders, and for the intelligence community, and for everybody in the American government who will shape policy about North Korea and South Korea. Pray for them to be guided by wisdom and discernment.

Pray for the leaders of other nation, that there may be harmony among nations and wisdom in the preservation of peace on the Korean peninsula. And, beyond the present foment, pray that the nations will be wise toward each other, and toward North Korea, and compassionate toward the North Korean people.

Pray that they will be compassionate, as I believe that God yearns to show his compassion, and as you are compassionate by praying for the welfare of a people that you do not know.

If you choose to take up this burden of prayer, I hope that God blesses you in it.

Seek the Meek!

Supreme self-confidence: it's a highly valued personal quality. At some point, "pride" became a good thing. Black pride. White pride. Gay pride.

I knew a young prosecutor. He was in trial. In a break in the trial, the defense attorney slapped down in front of him a picture of a Porsche. "That’s my car", the defense attorney said. Possession-proud.

A good friend of mine boasts that her body is better than it has ever been. And she is lean and strong. And I admire pictures of myself snapped at a swim meet. My friend and I are body-proud.

We can be career-proud. We can be education-proud. We can be brain-proud.

The Pharisees of Jesus’s time were famously proud of their own virtue. Virtue is, well, virtuous. But it can makes us think of ourselves more highly than we ought.

And what’s more pious that piety? But we can be impressed with our own piety. Piety-proud.

What about a man who writes about pride and humility? No doubt he can be humility-proud.

But we can't be proud and humble at the same time. Owning our failings foments gratitude. Those who are forgiven much love much. Those who are forgiven little love little. (Luke 7.)

1. Sin and me.

Maybe this is a truism: it’s easier to be an expert in other people’s sins than our own.

But sometimes knowledge of my sins leaps on me like a rabid badger. Times like those make me contrite.

But sin is not always a rabid badger. Sometimes I don’t begrudge my sins like an early riser begrudges the late-night music at his neighbor’s party. In those times, my knowledge of sin is a detached diagnosis. It’s like a doctor telling me that I have a medical condition that does not, however, keep me from doing anything that I want to do.

So love doesn’t exactly overflow when I consider God or think of my neighbor. Or choices that might be easy if I knew how to lean upon an all-knowing God to make them are hard. God isn’t a God of anxiety, but I have times of anxiousness; if I walked perfectly with God, I would not worry.

I cling to the things of this world. I am fretful of my reputation. I want to put a verbal thumb in the eye of a lawyer who insulted me. I get wrapped up in making a political point and forget to be kind. I’ve been foolish with money and opportunities.

These are murmurs of the heart that reveal to an educated ear that trouble lies inside. But, day to day, they don’t necessarily trouble me, because they are conditions that seem normal because they are long-standing. But they should.

2. Hailing sin.

I suppose that some of my friends will say that I’m debilitating myself with a "guilt trip". But to know my fault is valuable. I value humility when I find it in myself. I pray for a contrite spirit before God.

Thinking of myself as a neatly-ironed-and-folded man wouldn’t make me so. Hubris doesn’t ground me in reality. It spins a parallel universe in my mind of my own virtue that doesn’t match the reality of the world and doesn’t match the state of my soul.

And God can work with people who know their faults. In the Hebrew Bible, no man was greater than Moses; and no man was more humble. (Numbers 12:3.)

Jesus was humble. "[Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:8 (NRSV).)

The direction to be humble comes with a promise. For example: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." (James 4:10 (NRSV).)

3. Bearable faults.

Self-criticism is bearable because I hope in a kind God who loves me, sin and all.

And looking at the gutter-water of my soul channels me into right relationship with God. Knowing my wrong makes me grateful for his right. Knowing my sin makes me admire the man who died without sin, bearing in his dying body the sins of everyone else.

As a Christian, I can’t trust in riches, strength, status, learning, or smarts. To do so isn’t humble, and I want to be humble. When I am humble, I trust in the mercy, riches, strength, and wisdom of the one who made me.

4. Antiphonies.

But there is a call-and-response between accepting my sinfulness and striving to do right, to be right. I have to recognize that sin will always be close at hand, even mixed in with my virtues like sprayed colors of an artsy necktie. But I can’t think that sin is OK.

I can never trust that I am without sin; and if sins drop away with time, I can’t dilate with a sense of self-righteousness. But I’m supposed to work for a clean conscience with good works, so that in time of trouble my faith is founded on a rock.

I know that I have to strive to do what God wants. But I have to give credit to God when success in that comes.

I have to try to be perfect. But on my dying day I will have to trust in God’s virtue, not in my own.

Jesus speaks of people being "worthy" of the heaven. (Luke 20:35.) But in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14), the righteous Pharisee was not justified before God; the contrite tax collector was.

5. Perplexity.

I admit to perplexity here. I’m a cross-eyed archer who doesn’t know which eye to close.

Which I guess is fine. It keeps me from glorying in my own smarts.

Or maybe, when I first wrote this, I forgot at least a partial way to reconcile these biblical ideas: the Bible is fundamentally pastoral. Sometimes we need to strive to be better than we are. Other times we need to lean upon the grace of God. Sometimes we need to reckon the terrifying God of the book of Ezekiel. Sometimes we need to hope in the merciful God of Romans.

Humility makes peace between our fear of God and our knowledge of our own insufficiency.

Greater

A finger on a switch makes light
To brush our teeth, to pour our water.
But this dim spark in the wider world
Quickens few eyes, and
Does not shoulder off the cold.

A forebear lit a fire
To flicker on his face
And other faces near the fire.
It was warmth and light.
He fed it fuel to make it live.

The sun comes up.
It floods the wood with life and light.
It kindles the earth.
It is the cadence of our journeys
In every generation.

So God’s knowledge is to ours.
A genius searches into the infinite;
The end of his search is to know almost a sliver.
But God’s word alone opened the cosmos,
And all things of knowing.

So God’s love is to ours.
His heart warms to what he has made,
To men and women across the earth and years.
He sent his son to the risk of the world,
To death and to hell, to save.

So God’s wisdom is to ours.
His wisdom burst the stars across creation.
It made time, it made space,
It made nature in its hardiness, harmony, and bloom.
It makes way through harsh valleys to the high place.

So God’s mercy is to ours.
The sun glows on those who sin,
On those who simmer in gall,
On those who kill,
On those who call out "Crucify!"

God’s knowledge, love, wisdom, and mercy
Are over our minds as the sun is above
Temples, towers, rockets, and jets.
Satellites of searching sweep past the mind of God,
And send back signals, but God is greater than we know.