Barney Wiget's Blog, page 48

Accidental Evangelism

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Our flight plan and the Spirit’s are typically dissimilar. Problem is, changing course from our plan in order to get on course with his plan isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Inconveniences aside, what could be more important than being in the right place at the right time for a divinely scheduled appointment, especially if it involves influencing someone toward the Maker?

We were created to “do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.” “Eternally Ordained Opportunities” is what I call these works that God providentially prepared in eternity past. In other words, he puts Rahabs in our path and gives us the opportunity to partner with him in his quest to befriend them.

Most of my divine appointments with Rahabs are purely accidental on my part. Of course there are times when I’m actually aware of some prompting of the Spirit, but mostly I just try to live responsibly before God and trust that he’ll orchestrate the unforeseen.

– Originally published in Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends

On Folly and the Making of Fools

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In his Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer* wrote on folly and its only cure. I offer this without commentary. Come to your own conclusions about how to apply his wisdom in our country today.

Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force. Against folly we have no defense. Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved — indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions. …

If we are to deal adequately with folly, we must understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is a moral rather than an intellectual defect. There are people who are mentally agile but foolish, and people who are mentally slow but very far from foolish. We thus get the impression that folly is likely to be, not a congenital defect, but one that is acquired in certain circumstances where people make fools of themselves or allow others to make fools of them. …

The fact that the fool is often stubborn must not mislead us into thinking that they are independent. One feels in fact, when talking to them, that one is dealing, not with the person themselves, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like, which have taken hold of them. They are under a spell, they are blinded, their very nature is being misused and exploited. Having thus become a passive instrument, the fool will be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. Here lies the danger of diabolical exploitation that can do irreparable damage to human beings. … we have to realize why it is no use our trying to find out what “the people” really think, and why the question is so superfluous for the person who thinks and acts responsibly … a person’s inward liberation to live a responsible life before God is the only real cure for folly.

*Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a brilliant German pastor and theologian, resisted the Nazi regime and was eventually imprisoned and martyred for his part in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

The Law is the Law, or is it? – Romans 13 and the Refugee Crisis (Part 6 of 5ish)

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We’ve finally come to some concluding remarks on Romans 13:1-7. It did take a few more words than I anticipated, thus the “Part 6 of 5ish,” as anomalous as that is. We ended last time talking about the theological implications of the passage. I have a few more thoughts on that subject before calling it a day. I’ll pose a few commonly asked questions and do my best to respond to them.

Isn’t God “in control” of everything, including whoever is leading our country?

I hear people cite God’s sovereignty to justify their unbridled support of our present administration, and their immigration policies in particular. God is in control, they say, and make no effort to think through what that really means and how we might think critically through the implications of our responsibility to hold our leaders accountable to humane and just treatment of our neighbors.

Yes, he’s in control but he’s not controlling. He’s in charge of everything, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he controls everything that he’s in charge of.

I realize that God knows every sparrow’s life span and has our hairs all counted; but Jesus didn’t go so far as to say that he extends the lives of all birds or gives all bald men more hair! I’m not saying that he couldn’t do those things if he wanted to. If a circumstance presented itself that required such an intervention, I suppose he would do it and not work up a sweat in the process. But that’s not exactly how he usually rolls.

He has control, but he doesn’t exert total control in every circumstance. There’s no doubt that he can and will control the events of history’s final chapter, the ultimate outcome of his free will experiment. In the meantime, however (and believe me, some of these “times” can be pretty “mean”), he doesn’t always intervene to prevent a disaster or even reverse one once it occurs. Sometimes he chooses, what seems like a “hands-off” approach with human affairs and lets our choices sort of run their course. He can, and often does, sweep up our broken pieces in order to create something better than we were before (Romans 8:28). I love it when he does that.

READ ALSO: “LOVING AN UNPREDICTABLE GOD”  
If there are exceptions to the “submit to the government rule” why didn’t Paul point them out?

In other words, why didn’t he say, “Submit unless the government asks you to do something against the will of God”?

“Just as no one would think that Romans 14 had said the last Christian word about what one was allowed to eat or drink,” says N.T. Wright, “or that Romans 12 had said the last word about behavior in general, so Romans 13 must not be taken as the sum total of all that Paul might have thought, or could or should have thought, about what we call ‘the state’.”

It seems that Paul was trying to reel in those who sympathized with Zealot ideology that Rome had to burn and they were the ones to burn it! His purpose was not to give a completely balanced view of the relationship between the Church and the state. He focused merely on one side of the issue. For a more complete analysis of this issue (and any other for that matter) you have to take in the “whole counsel of God” that you’ll find in the rest of the Bible.

The Bible doesn’t usually qualify its commands with every possible exception to the rule, but that doesn’t mean there are no such exceptions. For instance, the Bible doesn’t include physical abuse as one of the “grounds” for divorce. Does that mean an abused woman stay with her husband at all cost? The Bible doesn’t address every possible scenario that might pop up in human history. If it did we would need a truck to haul our Bibles around and we wouldn’t need faith in the Spirit’s guidance.

Aren’t we responsible for American-born citizens inside our borders and let others take care of their own?

Since that’s a topic too big for here, I’ll make one remark about “image bearing” and then recommend another article of mine on this… 

Martin Luther King Jr. said that segregation substitutes an “‘I-it’ relationship for the ‘I-thou’ relationship [between humans]. The segregator relegates the segregated to the status of a thing rather than elevate him to the status of a person.” This is what we’re hearing in the administration’s rhetoric regarding immigrants and refugees. It dehumanizes God’s beloved and makes it emotionally easier for us to keep them at arm’s (or border’s) length when we label them “animals” or refer to them as an “infestation.”

“Let us make humans (not just Americans) in our image,” said the Father to the Son and Spirit. Above all other identifying qualities it’s this divine image that distinguishes us from all the other creatures and gives each of us a dignity above and beyond all other things in the created order. It’s a huge mistake to make Romans 13 mean that America’s present immigration laws are above God’s timeless laws that reach all the way back to creation. Immigrants and refugees are image bearers at our border, people whose needs can’t be dismissed as somehow less important than ours.

One of the best things about living in our nation is that we’re afforded the right to push back on what we consider unjust policies of our government. We do this all the time at the ballot box; through publications; by organizing educational, legal, and civic organizations that would defend other points of view; and by participating in peaceful protests.

Rosa Parks broke the law when she refused to move to the back of the bus. It’s called “civil disobedience” or “civil resistance.” I’m glad she did. Speaking of…

Is “civil disobedience” even biblical?

Yes, when necessary. Daniel prayed illegal prayers, his three buddies disobeyed when they refused to bow to the king’s image, and the apostles repeatedly refused to stop preaching when ordered to.

“Whenever laws are enacted which contradict God’s Law,” says John Stott, “civil disobedience becomes a Christian duty.” Mahatma Gandhi, who fought injustice in British ruled India, said, “Noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.”

“We will not cooperate with a government,” says Shane Claiborne, “that separates mothers from their babies and makes children sleep on cement floors.” Amen!

Martin Luther King called the Church “the conscience of the state.” “If the Church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”

In conclusion… It’s been quite a journey through these seven verses, which have been used over the centuries to justify all sort of unconscionable behavior by the Church. Christians have used them to rationalize everything from slavery to spousal abuse to putting child refugees in cages. I hope I have given a tolerable correction to this mistaken interpretation and brought out, from the larger narrative of Paul’s letter and the message of Scripture, what our responsibility is and isn’t in relation to “the powers that be.”

Exquisite Fellowship

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“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.” Philippians 3: 10

As fellow sufferers, our communion with each other in our common ground warms us. But even more significantly, when we suffer we may have fellowship with the greatest sufferer in history, who is the president of our “Sufferers’ Fellowship.” Whenever we gather, he is seated at the head of our table, beckoning all of us to take up our own crosses and follow him— not only to suffer for him, but with him.

The afflictions we experience today invite us to feel what Jesus felt. As we experience the sequel of Jesus’ agony, we commune with Christ and are welcomed to the table of his exquisite fellowship.

– Originally published in The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway (the profits of which go to Freedom House).

Golden Silence

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I wonder if Job’s “friends” had ever personally sat at the Sufferers’ Club table. If they had never been exposed to their own “valley of shadows,” it’s no wonder that they were limited in their ability to relate to his. They started out well when they “sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” If only they had remained there on the ground, lips sealed.

There’s nothing like having a friend with whom very little needs be said. Silence, in such cases is “golden.” That’s real fellowship!

– Originally published in The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway (the profits of which go to Freedom House).

The Law is the Law, or is it? – Romans 13 and the Refugee Crisis (Part 5 of 5ish)

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“You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!” Jesus

I’ve been saying from the beginning of this series that Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other politicians, pundits, and preachers were mistaken when they used Romans 13:1-7 to justify the administration’s policy to separate parents from children at the border and jail them as lawbreakers. Though I believe Sessions did the Word of God and the God of the Word a great injustice, I give him the benefit of the doubt that he believes his interpretation is a correct one. I’m not questioning his sincerity or his Christianity. His, I choose to believe, was an honest mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

We’ve been studying the passage from a lexical and a contextual perspective. Now let’s look at it from a theological vantage point.

“Theology” is simply the “study of God.” We who want to be like God first have to know what he’s like. Moses tells us what he’s like: “The LORD your God … is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. (Deuteronomy 10:17-18) If we want to be like him, a good place to begin might be to care about the things he cares about.

In this post and the following I’ll address a number of theological questions related to U.S. immigration policies and respond with some opinions of mine.

Does God determine who becomes President?

In the first verse of Romans 13 Paul did say, “The authorities that exist have been established by God.” I addressed this in the second post of this series, but suffice to say here, according to the Greek term used, it seems unlikely that Paul was saying that God ordains every governing authority. Yes, he ordains “government” as an entity, but doesn’t necessarily insert his choice into every vacant governmental seat.

I’ve heard some people go so far as to say that God put Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, others soften it by claiming that he “allowed” it and therefore still endorses him on some level. They reason then to push against his policies and criticize his person is to go against God. I never heard the same thing regarding Obama or Clinton, at least from my more conservative leaning friends. It seems some people’s theology is more party-motivated than Spirit-inspired, that their sociopolitical frame speaks louder than the voice of Scripture. They have “a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe their own traditions” and party-line.

I guess you could say that, since God created the world, in one sense he’s “allowed” every genocide, every death by plague, every child that has been sexually molested, and every baby that dies of malnutrition. So, that he “allowed” these things certainly can’t mean he approves of them. Because God “allows” something doesn’t mean he has no desire to change it or no intention to include us in the change.

Yes, Daniel says that God “deposes and raises up kings,” which is not to say that he does this in every case. That he is “sovereign over kingdoms and gives them to anyone he wants to” doesn’t mean he always does. God doesn’t always do what God can do. He reserves the prerogative to wield his sovereignty sovereignly.

Does God always get what he wants?

The short answer is: No, at least not in the short run. Eventually his ship will get to the shore at which he pointed it, but in the meantime, there’s all kinds of mystery between here and there, about which we haven’t the wisdom or knowledge to decipher. Who has the audacity to tell the Jews that Hitler was God’s choice for Germany or the North Koreans that Kim Jong Un is the man he chose to lead their nation? Was Stalin God’s man for Russia or Pol Pot for Cambodia?

God is sovereign. And it is his sovereign prerogative to choose when and where he will intervene miraculously, act behind the scenes, or pick up the pieces after the fact. He “works in all things together for the good of those who love him…” but that doesn’t mean he plans everything ahead of time, including who sits in the White House.

Some people equate God’s choice to install certain kings of Israel with putting Donald Trump in office. In my view this isn’t just bad theology, it’s bad logic. The disparity between the way God nurtured Israel to the place of giving birth to the Messiah and how he views America as a nation couldn’t be greater. God’s plan for the Jews to ultimately give us Jesus is a pretty unique situation I’d say! I see no straight line between his plan for pre-Jesus Israel and for America. We’re just not that “exceptional.” It’s not that he loves Americans less than the Jews, but that he had a purpose for the Jewish nation that he doesn’t have for America or any other state since.

Can God work through––mostly in spite of––a person like Mr. Trump? Sure. That’s why we pray. I can’t say that God chose him, installed him, or necessarily willed him to fill the Oval Office, but I can say that he “works in all things for the good of those who love him,” and I’m trusting him to do just that.

I don’t believe that the voice of the people necessarily represents the voice of God, i.e., that he controls the outcome of our democratic elections. There are enough examples in American history and the history of the world that show that sometimes, a lot of times, the people get it wrong.

In the immigration debate we often hear the phrase “the rule of law,” which at face value has value, unless a particular law being referred to has no value, i.e., is an unjust law. From the Birmingham jail Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an indictment of those who were “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”

“Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”

As people of faith, we hold that we have not only the right but also the duty to struggle against laws that we deem unjust, whether the Jim Crow laws of 50 years ago or the “Juan Crow” laws of today.

According to some people’s logic, because something is “legal” it must also be “moral” and therefore ordained by God. We’ve seen how this same lopsided reasoning was used to justify slavery as moral and ordained by God simply because it was legal. I’m not against laws, just bad laws!

While we may be limited in our ability to discern the difference, we do have a standard, the character of the God of justice who routinely mediates for the vulnerable and punishes the unjust. “Woe to those who make unjust laws,” says Isaiah, “to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning…?”

Read also: “Inadequate Samaritans”

Yes, those who sneak over the border have broken the laws of the United States. But, by exploiting them, aren’t we breaking the higher laws of God?

Yes, there will be a Part 6. How can there be such a thing as “Part 6 of 5ish”? I can only explain it as the mystery of the “ish.” Talk at you next weekish.

Listen More, Download Less

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If, before we get our hands on people, we recognize God’s hand is already on them, we tend to be less patriarchal and preachy. Our evangelistic efforts then look more Socratic than posturing. C.S. Lewis described himself as “a fellow patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier, could give some advice.”

We Christians tend to be better at telling people what they should believe rather than taking time to listen to what they already believe. We’re like the mechanic that rushes into working on the car before hearing what’s wrong with it. As foreign missionaries in a post-Christian culture, rather than merely bombarding them with words, we’re more effective if we begin by listening to those we’re befriending.

It’s better to ask questions than to give answers to questions they aren’t asking. How else can we know what the Spirit is already doing in them? And how else can we speak to them more and at them less? A good rule of thumb is to lead with listening and proceed with Jesus.

– Originally published in Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends

The Law is the Law, or is it? – Romans 13 and the Refugee Crisis (Part 4 of 5ish)

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“Romans 13 gives the government … the authority to do whatever, whether it’s assassination, capital punishment or evil punishment to quell the actions of evildoers like Kim Jong Un.” Southern Baptist Pastor Robert Jeffress

We’re looking at Romans 13:1-7 directly instead of obliquely like many preachers (such as Jeffress) and politicians (like Jeff Sessions) in order to mine the Spirit’s original intent. Does this passage or does it not give the government carte blanche to function with impunity (as in separating families at the border) and an inviolable mandate to its citizens to follow sheepishly along with its “divine authority” to proceed at will?

We’ve looked at the passage from a lexical vantage point and we began last time examining it from a contextual point of view, i.e., what comes immediately before and after. Let’s continue that line of thinking now.

“Love does no harm to a neighbor.”

At the most fundamental level, loving our neighbor means to do him or her no harm. You don’t harm people that that you love, at least not intentionally. The applications to this are innumerable, but how are we not harming our neighbors fleeing from famine, war, and brutal cartels from the other side of the border when we incarcerate and separate them from their families?

In contrast to our talent of sorting people into boxes of neighbors and enemies, agape love is indiscriminate. We’re to treat as neighbors, says Donald B Kraybill, “even those to whom we have no obligation to act neighborly—even enemies that we could justifiably hate. Agape love responds to persons, not to social categories. . . . We should work as hard to help our neighbors achieve their goals as we work for our own.”

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.”

When we sincerely love someone, at the same time, we hate what harms them. If an unjust law harms people, we’re to hate it (not the lawmaker, but the law) and resist it.

Clinging to the good isn’t about hoarding your Ben and Jerry’s for yourself, much less hoarding the good life you have when so many have an irreconcilably and unnecessarily bad life. Cling, then, to what is good for yourself but never at the expense of what would be good for others. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” (Philippians 2:3-4)

“Practice hospitality…”

I wouldn’t consider what’s being done at our southern border and then justifying it with the Bible as being particularly “hospitable” the Greek term used throughout the New Testament for which (philoxenia) literally means “brotherly love of strangers.” Hmmm. Not exactly what we see in separating parents from children and detaining them like criminals.

“Mourn with those who mourn…”

That is, enter into their pain and do what we can to relieve it.

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him…”

If we’re suppose to feed our enemies, what about the starving at our border?

To those who cry, “Yeah, but they’re breaking the law!” I would propose that God’s law is higher than man’s. Which is worse, them breaking the law of the land or us breaking God’s law of love (and consequently his heart)? Let me pose a scenario that might clarify my point.

A father tells his eldest son to always love and protect his younger brother no matter the cost, to which he agrees. He also teaches his boys to always obey the laws of the land, which exist for everyone’s benefit.

The next day the two boys are playing next to a pond, which prohibits swimming in no uncertain terms. “Stay out of the pond. Violators will be prosecuted!” says a prominently displayed sign. The younger boy, who doesn’t know how to swim, slips, falls in the water, and shouts for help. Does the older boy obey the law or save his brother?

This is part of what is going on here in Paul’s letter to the Romans. He tells them to be devoted to one another in love, honor one another above themselves, and practice hospitality. He tells them to love even their enemies. In the very next breath he admonishes them not to revolt against the government’s authority. Always love and care for your neighbor––yes even for those outside your sphere (i.e., enemies)––AND obey the laws of the land. The question is what do we do when loving actions contradict one of the laws of the land? Do we save our brother or obey the “No Swimming” sign?

Only the most law-over-love folks would suggest to call 911 in hopes they can get there before he drowns! If their brother dies, at least the legalist obeyed the law. They didn’t save their brother but you can’t accuse them of being a lawbreaker!

Absurd, right? No more absurd than the idea that a parent fleeing life-threatening hunger or violence is more obligated to obey our unjust immigration laws than to save their children! Paul never teaches law over love. If they clash, then treat your brother or sister lovingly and let the law take care of itself.

“Love your neighbor as yourself”

This oft repeated command frames all our social interactions.

Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves at least three separate times: To the rich young ruler, a group of Pharisees, and an expert in the law. The last of these, in an effort to narrow the circle of people he had to love asked Jesus who was this illusive “neighbor”? Jesus replied with the parable of the infamous Samaritan who acted more neighborly than the priest and Levite who put law above love.

Paul says that in neighbor-love all of God’s commands are encompassed (“summed up” and “fulfilled”) and James creates a title for it: “The Royal Law of Scripture.”

Everything God wants is filtered through this one two-part command, “Love your God and love your neighbor.” Everything emanates from these, regardless of who the “neighbor” happens to be, wherever they happen to have been born, whatever color they inherited, or creed to which they ascribe. This is the standard, the plumb line.

No one said it would be easy, but we need to sort out how to live faithfully in the tension law and love, for love trumps laws (no pun intended), laws which are not plumb with love. Each thing we do personally and socially has to pass through the purifying influence of love of God and neighbor.

So, do we submit to the letter of the law and punish legitimate refugees (especially children) escaping violence and hunger to enter our country for survival or do we love them as neighbors and love their Creator enough to find a way to drop the charges and practice hospitality?

“If one confines one’s love to one’s own circle, one identifies oneself not with God, who loves universally, but with the racketeers and pagans, who limit their love to those who love them.” Clarence Jordan

Ya’ll come back next week for some talk about the theological implications of Romans 13. Until then, love your neighbor.

A Relaxed Urgency In Sharing Christ

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Knowing that I’m simply appealing to the Spirit’s attractive pull already going on in a person’s soul relieves me of an unbearable weight on my shoulders. I can be less scripted in my efforts and a little more agile in my interactions. My witnessing then becomes more of a collusion and less of a collision!

It helps me have a relaxed urgency about sharing Christ. Since it’s not on me or about me, I can be more chill about telling others what I know about him.

Some people are so perfectly comfortable with their faith that they feel no need to hide it or to prove it. It’s just who they are, so when they offer Jesus to others, it doesn’t come out all forced and sweaty. They’re just letting someone in on the “secret” of what makes them tick.

– Originally published in Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends

Faith: Formulaic or Friendship

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If I aim my faith at the character of God— his goodness, wisdom, and lovingness— I’ll receive whatever I need to get well or be able to suffer well.

When I’m not sure if I should be contending for a healing miracle or pleading for grace to endure my malady, it helps me when I focus my attention on how good God is, how wise are his judgments, and how reliable is his track record. That way my confidence is in him instead of in a certain outcome. Then it’s more about trust in his Person than working a formula in order to get what I want. Faith isn’t a tool to help me get what I want, but a story about our friendship.

I don’t know what God is going to do, but I do know that he knows what he’s doing. My faith in him isn’t so utilitarian; it’s how I relate to him. Whether or not I get healed, I trust him in a way that I didn’t before. I enjoy him immensely and feel closer to him than ever.

– Originally published in The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway (the profits of which go to Freedom House).