R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 109

The Unfairness of it All

Not getting what you deserve can be a good thing. Paul makes clear in his many letters that became part of the New Testament that the Christian’s relationship to God—his salvation—are the consequence of Jesus’ death on the cross alone. There is nothing that anyone can do, or not do, good or bad, that will contribute to salvation. You can not earn your way to God, according to Paul. Jesus was punished in your place, and so there is no punishment left to endure. The price was paid, and so there’s nothing more that you need to pay. It’s all free and clear. It is a difficult concept for most people to accept, for two reasons.

First, it is unfair and unjust. Those who are guilty are let off. Second, it runs counter to our life experience. We get paid our wages on the basis of our performance. We earn grades in school on the basis of our performance. We continue to have relationships with our friends and family because of our performance. We win games on account of our performance. And now, against all that, God tells us that our performance doesn’t matter at all: we get everything just because God loves us, because Jesus died in our place.

It is hard to overcome the sense of guilt, the sense that surely there must be something I have to do or not do in order to earn God’s favor. Counter-intuitively, Paul argues no.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

(Galatians 2:20-3:5)

Being good, doing the right thing, not making bad choices: that’s the smart way to live, like balancing your checkbook is a good idea. But behaving properly won’t make you more holy or closer to God, anymore than you’ll actually change the contents of your checking account by balancing your checkbook.

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To Obey God Rather Than Man

One day Peter and the apostles had to practice civil disobedience. Peter and John had healed a man who had been unable to walk for years; he was a well-known beggar at the temple, and so the healing gained quick notoriety. Soon, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came and seized Peter and John and put them in jail. Admittedly an odd reaction on the part of the authorities, until you consider that they were frustrated with the fact that the followers of Christ had not gone away when Jesus died. Instead, they claimed he came back to life; and now the miracles that had created such a problem for them with Jesus were continuing. They saw the rise of Christianity as a threat to the continued existence of the Jewish nation: they feared Christianity would create a rebellion or some other problem with Rome and that Rome would then destroy everything. Their motivation was to preserve their people–and incidentally, their comfortable positions of leadership.

The following day, the rulers, elders and teachers of the law met in Jerusalem; Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, Alexander and the other men of the high priest’s family were present and had Peter and John brought before them for questioning. Peter and John took the opportunity to tell them about Jesus, his resurrection, and the salvation from sin offered by him. Since the man whom they had healed was standing there with them, there was little they could say. So they ordered them to withdraw from the Sanhedrin and began discussing the matter. “What are we going to do with these men?” they asked. “Everybody living in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding miracle, and we cannot deny it. But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name.” (Acts 4:16-17)

Then they called Peter and John back in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John replied, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19-20)

The principle of civil disobedience that the apostles here institute is this: they will act as they believe God wants them to act and if that involves violating the commands of human beings and human governments, so be it. But, as the events that followed demonstrate, they were willing to then accept the punishments, whatever they might be, that would be meted out by those people or governments.

The important principle that became the norm in the early Christian community was to obey God, even if that meant breaking the law. Unjust laws simply could not, in good conscious, be obeyed. Over the centuries that followed, many Christians, both individually and in groups, operated according to this basic principle, whether it was continuing to worship God in the face of persecution or even at the risk of execution, or if it meant disobeying what the law said was right, because they believed that it was, in fact, wrong. Thus, in the United States, opposition to the practice of slavery led many believers to work tirelessly to help slaves escape from their enslavement, even though the law said that what they were doing was wrong and was, in fact, theft.

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What It’s All About

What it’s all about is neither the hokey-pokey nor 42. One day while Jesus was teaching, a religious leader approached Jesus and asked him which law he thought was the most important of all.

Jesus quickly answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Then he added, “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire Bible is built on those two laws.” (Matthew 22:36-40) Later, the Apostle Paul would point out that “love your neighbor as yourself” sums up the entire law. After all, he said, love does no harm to its neighbor: if you love someone, you’re not going to kill him, or steal from him, or do anything else but what would help him. (Romans 13:8-10, Galatians 5:14).

So what is it all about? It is all about love.

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People Can Change

Saul went to the High Priest in Jerusalem and got letter to the synagogues in Damascus so that if he found any Christians, he could take them as prisoners and haul them back to Jerusalem for trial.

On his way to Jerusalem, a light from heaven flashed around him and he fell to the ground. He heard a voice ask him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

Saul responded by inquiring about the identity of the voice. The voice identified itself as belonging to Jesus and that Saul was persecuting him. Then the voice told him, “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

The men traveling with Saul stood around speechless, hearing the noise but not seeing anyone. When Saul got up from the ground, he opened his eyes and discovered that he was blind. They led him by the hand on into Damascus, where he remained blind for the next three days.

Meanwhile, a Christian by the name of Ananias had a vision. “Ananias!”

“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

“Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”

“Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”

So, Ananias went and found Saul just where God told him he’d be. Once there, he put his hands on Saul, and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. All those who heard him were astonished and asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?”

Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled everyone who knew him: the man who had persecuted Christians, had suddenly become one.

And it wasn’t just his former colleagues who had a hard time accepting that he had changed. Those who had been persecuted by him were even slower to accept the transformation.

Without exception, we find it hard to accept that people can change, that “old dogs” can learn “new tricks.” And yet, it does happen. In the Bible, Saul is the prize example of the unexpected metamorphosis: of a bad man becoming good. Charles Colson had served Nixon during his presidency, and had been heavily involved in the Watergate cover-up. He was notorious for all the bad things he had done. Many people remained skeptical of the change that he underwent when he became a Christian, even after he devoted the remaining decades of his life to Christian ministry, specifically working with the incarcerated and their families. There were many of his political opponents that never accepted the change and even to this day, refuse to accept that anything good could have actually come out of him.

Paul doubtless faced similar doubts his whole life, both from former colleagues, as well as those who had become his new colleagues.

We marvel at changed lives; we applaud those who turn their lives around. And yet, unlike God, many of us will continue to doubt–or will watch carefully, waiting for them to fail, so we can chortle and tell people, “see, I told you so.”

How do we walk the line between not being fooled or conned–of being too naive and trusting–and refusing to accept genuine repentance? How do we tell the difference between the con and the real thing? And how many people don’t believe that real change is possible, that redemption can happen?

As a Christian, we should recognize the transformative power of the Holy Spirit–and we should accept it when it is real, even if the person transformed is not a person we like or entirely agree with.

Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying that the best way to destroy your enemy is to change him into your friend. We need to learn to recognize when that happens.

Sometimes it Works Out Differently

John the Baptist beheaded. Sometimes the good news will never come. John the Baptist was a faithful prophet of God. His life had been a hard one, born to an old man and old woman, who, according to tradition died when he was still quite young, he had spent most of his life living in the desert, subsisting on whatever food he could find there, usually bugs and sometimes a bit of wild honey. After announcing that his cousin, Jesus, was the Messiah, he saw his followers drift away after the new man; although he understood it had to be that way, he was still human.

Then, after criticizing the king and his wife, he found himself arrested and kept in a prison; at last, to satisfy the vengeance of the king’s wife, the king—on account of a drunken promise to a dancing strumpet, his wife’s daughter—has him beheaded. So John died, alone and on a whim.

There was no last minute rescue; there was no happy ending.

Yet.

The words of the author of Hebrews are important to consider when life turns out this badly:

There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

(Hebrews 11:35-40)

Reluctant Hero

According to the third and fourth chapters of Exodus, Moses was a very reluctant hero. The impetuous man who wanted justice for the Israelites, who was quick to murder an oppressor, no longer existed forty years later when God appeared in a burning bush out in the Midian wilderness. Moses was not interested in rescuing slaves and no longer bothered himself with justice for God’s people. He was beyond old, he was tired, and he had a good life right where he was, and it was too late for him.

But the man who doesn’t want to do the job is often the best one for it, especially if the job is high profile and powerful. There is a difference between those who have greatness thrust upon them, versus those who seek it out–or worse, simply inherit it.

One day Moses was out taking care of sheep, the same as what he’d done most days for the last forty years. But then he noticed something out of the ordinary: a bush in flames. As he watched it burning, he eventually realized that although there was fire, the bush seemed not to be getting consumed by the flame. Puzzled, he finally decided to walk over and check it out.

He was startled when a voice came from the bush, first calling to him by name, and then demanding that he come no closer and that he should take his shoes off. Shortly after that, the voice then identified itself as belonging to God: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:7-10)

Moses responded by asking, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharoah and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

God reassured him that he would go with him.

Moses asked for God’s name. God gave him one.

Moses asked, “what if they don’t believe me?” God gave him some miracles to perform: turning his staff into a snake, turning his hand leprous and not, and turning water into blood.

Moses then told God that he was a lousy public speaker. God reassured him that, given that he had made Moses’ mouth, he really had nothing to worry about: God would give him the words he needed to say.

Finally, out of excuses, Moses simply told God, “Please send someone else to do it.” (Exodus 3:13)

Exasperated, God told him that Aaron, his brother, could act as his spokesperson: but in any case, Moses would have to go and do the job. Reluctantly, seeing no way out, Moses obeyed at last and went to prepare for the journey back to Egypt.

Accomplishing mighty things for God has little to do with our own desires or effort (see the story of Jonah for another reluctant hero). Instead, it all has to do with God’s choice:

It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. (Romans 9:16)

What’s Convincing

Jesus once told a story about a rich man and a man named Lazarus. It was in the context of his confrontation with the religious leaders of his day. Jesus explained that no one can serve two masters–meaning that one cannot serve both money and God. Then he told them that divorcing their wives to marry another was still adultery since they were divorcing one woman just so they could sleep with another–and simply preserving the legal niceties didn’t change what was in their heart. Finally, he told the story about a beggar named Lazarus who contented himself with eating what fell from a rich man’s table. But when the rich man and the beggar Lazarus died, Lazarus wound up with Abraham in paradise, while the rich man was tormented in flames. First, the rich man begged that Lazarus be permitted to put a drop of water on his tongue. Abraham denied the request, pointing out that the rich man had lived well on earth while Lazarus suffered and so now that situation was reversed. Besides, it wasn’t possible: there was a gulf between them that no one could pass, even had Lazarus wanted to ease the rich man’s torment. When the rich man understood that his request was impossible, he begged that Abraham would send Lazarus back to warn his brothers so that they would not wind up tormented as he.

Abraham denied that request as well, pointing out that if his brothers couldn’t be bothered to listen to what the Bible said, then they were not going to be convinced by the words of a man who came back from the dead.

Some people believe that if we found evidence of some past miracle of God, such as the Ark, then everyone would have to believe in God. Others think that a modern miracle would do it. Others claim that if God were to talk to them, or answer their questions, or perform some stupendous trick, then they’d believe. All of that is utter bilge. In the time of Jesus, the religious leadership knew that Jesus was performing miracles. It did not convince them to accept Jesus as the Messiah.

There is no way to make someone believe if they choose not to. Consider how hard it is to get someone to change their mind over much less significant things.

Our Own Folly

A man’s own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the LORD. (Proverbs 19:3)

Sometimes, we do exactly what God wants and things still go badly—as Moses discovered in Exodus 5 when his first attempts to rescue the Israelites from slavery in Egypt—making use of the two signs God had given him—resulted in the Israelites having to work harder than ever. Paul had a hard life, facing shipwreck, snake bites, floggings and ultimately execution even though he was doing precisely what God wanted him to do.

But a lot of times, people make bad choices and then are quick to try to lay blame elsewhere, refusing to face up to their own folly. An example of this from the Bible would be the story of Esau in Genesis 25 and 27. Esau had sold his birthright to his brother simply because he came home hungry one day and wanted some of the stew that his brother was making. Unconcerned about the value of what he was giving up, all he saw was the immediate satisfaction of having a nice bowl of stew.

Later, his brother by stealth stole the blessing of the firstborn by impersonating Esau. When Esau discovered how he’d been ripped off, he complained bitterly about what Jacob has taken from him: his birthright and his blessing. But for all his complaining, for all his regrets, his choices in his life had their consequences that he had no choice but to endure. It’s not God’s fault if you suffer for your own mistakes. And we all make mistakes; lots of them. Every day. Don’t blame God for it; just own up to it and ask God for help in correcting it.

Frankly, in the United States, most of the suffering that people do for their faith is not because of their relationship with Jesus, but because of how they handle their relationship with the people around them. They’re not suffering for righteousness’ sake, but simply because they’re insufferable, arrogant, Pharisaical, or stupid.

For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? (1 Peter 2:19-20)

God Knows Best

Back in the 1950s there was a television show called “Father Knows Best.” The father in the television show was not perfect, but while human father’s don’t always know best, our heavenly Father does. Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 12:6-10 that God responded to one of Paul’s prayers–which he repeated three times–with a firm “no.” Paul had a problem that he wanted fixed, but God refused.

Most likely Paul had some sort of illness. He describes it as a “thorn in the flesh.” Given his practice of sometimes referring to human sinfulness as “the flesh,” a few have speculated that perhaps he faced a serious temptation that he wanted to be freed from. God’s response to him was that “my grace is sufficient for you.” The answer Paul had wanted was relief from his illness. What he got instead was God affirming that, “I’ll stand with you while you endure it.” If it was a problem with a sin, God’s reassurance was that it was covered by God’s sacrifice on the cross; likewise, a physical illness was covered by that too.

Perhaps the ambiguity of Paul’s problem is purposeful: whether our illness is spiritual or physical, we have the confidence that God will be with us and help us to endure it.

Good Intentions Only Pave the Road to Hell

Actions matter more than words. The author of the Letter of James writes that faith all by itself doesn’t do much. From this has come the popular notion, often criticized, that “God helps those who help themselves.” But that in fact is what James’ point actually is. He demands of his readers that those who claim to have faith should be demonstrating that fact. Demons believe in God, he tells us, but that doesn’t seem to change their behavior at all. Telling us you have faith is about as useful as a demon’s belief in God. What you believe should be reflected in how you live. If it isn’t, what good is your belief? If someone lacks food and clothes, telling them, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed” doesn’t end their suffering. If you don’t actually do something about their physical needs, your kind words and good intentions are worthless.

In politics, nine times out of ten all that seems to matter are the words that the politicians chose to say. What they actually do rarely matters. The intentions of their programs and legislations trumps the actual outcome. If it doesn’t work, doesn’t help, or actively hurts, well, who cares. The intentions were good. We did something. We prove we care. The politician that says warm words about the suffering gets more political traction than the one who doesn’t, even if the one who doesn’t open his mouth puts real money, sweat and tears into an effort that is actually transformative. If the politician belongs to the wrong party, or if he doesn’t use just the right magic words, what he does seems not to matter.

But in the real world, unlike the political world, what you do matters far more than what you say.

Our presidents, our congresses, our governors and our legislators have very good intentions. They love telling us how much they care, how much they feel our pain, and they love giving pretty speeches about how much they intend to make things better. Unfortunately, they are just paving the road to Hell. Telling us how they meant well doesn’t make the flames feel any better.