Category Archives: Scripture

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom

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Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

—Psalm 130:1-4 (ESV)

I found myself, upon reading this psalm (along with Psalms 131 and 134) to my older girls this evening, explaining to them the whole concept of the fear of the Lord. It’s rather a difficult one, especially for an eight-year-old and a five-year-old, since obviously I don’t want them to go around terrified of God—and yet, they need to understand this. I need to understand this. I’m sure there are many who could do a much better job than I did, but here (more or less) is what I told them.

  • Awe. A couple years ago at Thanksgiving, we took a trip through Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, and the Grand Canyon. The kids absolutely loved it. I reminded them of how they’d felt looking out across those great canyons—including the element of fear of what would happen if they fell in. In the same way, only far, far more so, God is great and glorious and beautiful—and not safe.
  • Holiness. Our God is a consuming fire, as Deuteronomy and Hebrews tell us; if we as we are, unholy, impure, and frail, were to enter his presence, we would burn like moths in a flame. There’s a reason Isaiah was terrified at even just a vision of the holiness of God: it’s more than we can bear.
  • Wrath. Along with this goes the wrath of God against sin, which is the mainspring of his judgment on sin, which we have richly earned for the waywardness of our hearts—even the best of us. God is the one who cannot and will not tolerate sin, and the judge of all the earth; we should feel in our bones the truth that we deserve only his judgment.
  • Discipline. To be sure, you might well say that those who are in Christ have been given instead his grace, and that is true; and yet, our sin still deserves his wrath, and just because we have received grace does not mean we’ve been given a “get out of punishment free” card. Rather the contrary: “The Lord disciplines the one he loves.” As Hebrews notes, discipline is painful rather than pleasant, even though it brings good fruit.
  • The untamed God. We cannot control God; we cannot make him do what we want, or keep him from doing what we do not want, and we cannot ensure that he will only ask us to do what we want to do and feel comfortable doing. As Mr. Beaver says of Aslan, God is good, but he isn’t safe—and there is nothing less safe than surrendering control to him that he may call us and lead us where and as he will. (Not that our control is ever anything more than an illusion anyway, but it’s an illusion to which we cling desperately for all that.) We fear what he may do to us, and where he may take us; we fear the loss of all we’ve ever known and wanted—and quite reasonably so, for God may indeed require all that of us and more, even to the point of asking us to lay down our lives in his service. Of course, he promises to give us a far better life in exchange, but that’s an unknown quantity, and we fear the unknown.

As we are, we could not bear the full presence of God; we could not even survive a glimpse of his face. In Jesus Christ, he has made a way for us to enter his presence, he has opened a way for us through the veil—but he is still the Lord of the Universe and the Creator of all that is, his glory is still a light to blast our eyes out the backs of our skulls and his holiness is still a fire that would burn us beyond even the memory of ash; if he has made it safe for us to come to him, it’s not because he himself is safe or because we are somehow worthy to stand in his presence, but rather because he paid the price in himself for us to do so.

Even with all that Christ has done for us, it remains true that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom—because the beginning of wisdom is not to take God lightly, or to take his grace for granted.

Called to be pro-love

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The most interesting thing I’ve ever seen written on abortion by a liberal was a column by Neil Steinberg in the Chicago Sun-Times of about five years ago. The original is no longer up on the Sun-Times website (which seems to be a real problem with that paper), and the copy that had been up on findarticles.com is no longer there either, so I can’t send you back to read the whole piece; but here’s what I saved at the time:

During one of the policy discussions that occupy my day, a flash struck me that seemed like, if not quite insight, then perhaps something other than just another tired lob from the same familiar ramparts.

Here goes: Is it possible that in their relentless drive to make abortion once again illegal, the religious right actually encourages more abortions to take place?

It makes sense, in a law-of-unintended consequences fashion. Pro-choice women’s groups correctly see themselves as locked in a life-or-death battle to preserve the legality of abortion, and so tend to close ranks and take an absolutist, it’s-our-right-and-no-one-can-take-it-away approach to the practice. Any questioning of abortion’s morality or desirability is seen as giving ammunition to those who would ban it. Thus, the idea that abortion is an ethically dubious procedure that nobody wants to go through is a luxury they can’t afford.

However, imagine for a moment that the religious right were not intent on its futile quest to reverse the law. Imagine that, rather than trying to work through the government, they instead focused on the undesirability of the procedure—as something women should choose not to do. Then the two groups might find common ground, since both agree that no woman is happy to feel the need to go through an abortion.

Steinberg went on to note, “I’m not expecting either side to embrace this idea,” and I think he was right not to be sanguine on the point, for a variety of reasons; but I also think he’d put his finger squarely on one of the things that makes the abortion debate so nasty: the number of people who can’t see the trees for the forest—and yes, you heard me correctly. There are a lot of folks on the Left who are so focused on the issue of abortion as a whole that they miss,dismiss or ignore all the details, including the actual people involved. It’s usually conservatives who get hit with this criticism, but anymore—due as much to battle fatigue and cynicism as anything—such voices on the Right are not representative. That attitude isn’t gone from the Right by any means, as the recent murder of George Tiller showed, but it’s much rarer than it once was. There are still a great many the Left, though, for whom any issue, any question of fact, any circumstance which bears in any way on abortion rights is to be viewed only with regard to whether it tends to advance or restrict abortion as a whole, and supported or opposed, proclaimed or rejected on that basis and that basis only.

The problem is, while that can be a good way to win an argument, it’s really not a healthy one, and it’s definitely not a good way to govern a country; those of us who are pro-life will always be tempted to respond in kind, but we need to look for more productive ways to argue our position. We need to take a step back from the political argument du jour, reorient ourselves, and go back to our most basic theological principles to make our case. In so doing, while we’re not likely to change the minds of any of our hard-core opponents, we’ll have a chance to find or create common ground with more moderate folks on the pro-abortion side, and thus perhaps to help them understand the real reasons why we believe as we do; out of that, we may be able to win some of them over, and find ways to at least moderate the abortion regime in this country.

With that in mind, it seems to me there are a few theological principles that need to be considered with regard to the issue of abortion. First and foremost, there is the truth that God is the one true King over all creation. This tells us two things of particular importance. One is that he is specifically Lord over us, and we’re under his rule; this makes us responsible to seek his will as honestly as we can, and to obey it with all faithfulness. In the last analysis, his will must come before our own desires, however strong those desires may be. The other is that he is Lord in everything that happens; there is nothing which surprises him, nothing which happens outside his control, and nothing which he does not intend to use for his greater glory and for the greater good of all who worship and follow him.

Second, the view that puts individualism and individual freedom of choice as the highest political good is alien to Scripture. We are called by God as part of his people, as part of the community of faith, and we are all dependent on each other; we as individuals aren’t the center of God’s plan, the community is. In the midst of our selfish, fallen world, he’s at work building a people, creating a community, to carry his message of redemption and reconciliation to all who need to hear it, and we’ve been given the gift of being a part of that plan. The key to this is recognizing that we need each other, and that we have responsibilities to each other, and as such that we are called to live lives of service to each other and to the world, not simply to pursue our own wills.

Third, we need to remember the importance of justice as a theme and emphasis of Scripture; one of the two great complaints the prophets raised against Israel and Judah was the injustice of their societies, that those who had wealth and power oppressed and abused those who didn’t. Those who cannot defend themselves, those who have no options, those who cannot support themselves, those who have no hope—these are the people whom God calls us to serve, first and foremost, and if we don’t, we will have to answer for our failure.

Fourth, we must always be humble in our politics. That goes first of all to our expectations, that we need to remember that we are limited, and play within ourselves, so to speak; if we overreach, we can end up doing more harm than good. It also goes to our view of ourselves, that we need always bear in mind that we are sinful, and therefore fallible. Even at our best, our motives and actions are still tainted by our sinful nature; even at our brightest, we are still prone to error. We need to bear that in mind and not get too impressed with either the brilliance of our ideas or the goodness of our hearts; we need to remember that we too are sinners, and that our salvation is only by God’s grace, not by any of our own effort.

Given these four points, what are we to make of the abortion issue? In considering that question, I think we need to begin not at the usual point, but with the sovereignty of God. In Psalm 139, we see that the psalmist understands his life as a gift from God, who made him in the womb and gave him all the days of his life; but the broader emphasis of that section of this psalm is that God didn’t make him and then wander off to do other things. This is critically important for us to affirm, that not only did the Lord create us, he continues to be with us and to watch over us. The Lord is far away, yes, ruling over all creation from his throne in heaven, but he is also very near, surrounding us and keeping his hand on us. There is no way, imagine what impossibilities you will, that we can go where God wouldn’t be with us, or hide where God wouldn’t see us; there is no part of our lives, no matter how seemingly insignificant, about which he doesn’t care.

This is a great truth about God, but it’s one which I’ve never heard mentioned one way or the other as the church discusses abortion. That’s a loss, because it seems to me it’s quite relevant to this issue, for two reasons. One is that, if we affirm that God is the giver of all life and that his concern extends even to those not born, as the psalmist does here—a point supported by God’s words to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5—that God is Lord at every point and in every circumstance, and that he watches closely over us to care for us, that leads to the affirmation that God is at work in every pregnancy, even in those where the circumstances are difficult, painful, or disastrous; which, it seems to me, means that God values that new life whether or not anyone else does.

Equally, however, it means that God values the life and well-being of the woman who is pregnant; which leads to the second point, that the message of the sovereignty of God is a reason for hope for those who are pregnant under troubled or traumatic circumstances, because it means that the God who allowed those circumstances is a God who has the will and the power to redeem them, to give victory even in their midst, and to turn them to blessing. That needs to be the message of the church to all who are struggling, to all who are suffering, to all who can’t see hope in any direction, including women who are contemplating abortion: no matter how hard things look, God loves you, he is with you, and there is a way forward.

Of course, to say such a thing, the church needs to remember that we are always called to be a part of that way forward. This is part of what it means that we are called as the community of faith, that we have been commanded to bear each other’s burdens, to help each other carry what is too heavy for us to carry alone. This is also, I think, part of doing justice. Standing up for the unborn is one aspect of doing justice for the powerless; but so is standing up with and for those who are pregnant. Even in the best of circumstances, pregnancy is a burden, and in more than just the physical sense; and as Sarah Palin admitted in her Evansville speech, in bad circumstances, it can be enough to make even those most staunchly pro-life quail a little.

As such, for women who are in that situation, it is the church’s responsibility to step up and help in whatever way we can. Whether it be emotional support for those who are overwhelmed, financial support to keep young women from being trapped below the poverty line, academic support for those still in school, the gift of time, whatever, the church needs to offer whatever assistance it can to women who choose not to have abortions.

The fundamental reality here is that the church is called, if you will, to be pro-love. This doesn’t mean being uncritically accepting of every behavior we run across, but it does mean making it very, very clear that “come as you are” doesn’t just mean clothing, and it means putting our time and money where our mouth is. Jesus was uncompromising toward sin, but he welcomed and loved everyone who came to him honestly, even as he called them, just as he calls us, to leave their sin behind and follow him. He loved beyond reason, even asking forgiveness for his torturers as they were busy killing him, accepting his death willingly in order to redeem his chosen ones.

This is the love with which we have been loved; this is the love we are to show others. It’s a love which values others not for what they’ve done, or what they can do, or for how much they’re like us, or for what we can get out of them, but simply because they are; and consequently, it’s a love which “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” and which never hesitates to give of itself. Yes, I believe the church is called to show this love to unborn children; beyond doubt, we’re also called to show this love to the women carrying them. It’s the great tragedy of the abortion debate that too many people seem to love only one or the other.

To be truly pro-life is not simply to try to stop women from having abortions and to imagine the job done, nor is it to countenance manipulation in any way, shape, or form to achieve that purpose; rather, it is to provide the necessary support to make abortion the less-attractive option. Though abortion has become a political football, it shouldn’t be approached primarily as a political issue, as that sort of approach tends to run over the people involved; though changes in the legal structure and climate are important, the day-to-day work of the pro-life movement is at the grassroots level, converting minds and hearts and blessing lives by offering grace. Though there are certainly times when it’s necessary to call people to repentance, we must do so in love; there is no room for stigmatizing women who have had abortions, for that way lies nothing but unnecessary and pointless hurt. This is one of those places where humility is particularly important, remembering that none of us are really in any position to presume on our own holiness and righteousness, either.

To anyone pro-choice who might happen to read this, I would say: I know that right now, there are some loud voices trying to make Scott Roeder the face of the pro-life movement—please, don’t let them. Don’t judge those of us who disagree with you by our wingnuts. I’ve seen too many people on the pro-choice side of the aisle declare that pro-lifers hate women, but as a rule, it isn’t so. I realize that the rhetoric has too often been overheated and unbalanced; I realize that too often that has reflected an unbalanced concern on the part of many people. But I would ask you to accept our sincerity, and to work with us to offer better choices, truly better, to women for whom abortion might otherwise seem the only way out. Rather than allowing our disagreement over abortion to continue to drive us to attack each other, let’s turn it into a spur for improving the lives of women in this country, and especially for the poor, the abused, and the dispossessed; let’s learn to work on this together, as a way of showing the love and the grace of God to each other and to those in need. Rather than focusing on trying to win battles, let’s put our energy into bearing each other’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Love without truth is dead (and vice versa)

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And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

—Ephesians 4:11-16 (ESV)

Philip over at The Thinklings has an excellent post up from yesterday entitled “Love Without Truth Isn’t Love At All”; I agree with him wholeheartedly and commend it to your attention.  I believe his point is a critically important one, and one which has been largely lost not only in our culture but in much of the church in this country, in large part because we’ve lost sight of Paul’s definition of spiritual maturity—and perhaps, in many cases, of any concept of spiritual maturity at all, or at least of any sense that it’s something to be greatly desired.

That’s our loss, because Paul is right (and so is Philip):  love cannot exist without truth—and of equal importance, neither can truth exist without love, and we’ve largely lost sight of that, too.  When Paul characterizes spiritual maturity as a matter of “speaking the truth in love,” he gives us what seems to me to be one of the most luminous statements in Scripture, capturing the way Christ calls us to live in one single, balanced phrase.  We are called to speak the truth in love as a way of life, compromising neither, setting neither above the other, and for good reason: neither can exist in its pure state without the other.

Love without truth decays, because true love seeks only what is best for the beloved; when truth is taken out, whether because the truth seems too hard, too painful, too inconvenient, too much work, too risky, too unpleasant, or what have you, the heart of love is gone, for it is seeking, in one way or another, its own perceived benefit. It may believe that it’s trying to spare the other person unnecessary pain, or something of that sort, but in reality it’s trying to spare itself; and that way leads the decline of love into the mere sentimentality which declares, “Love is blind.” No, love has its eyes wide open, because love is founded on truth. It’s precisely the fact that Jesus knew exactly what he was doing and exactly whom he was doing it for, with no illusions as to our worthiness or anything else, that made his death on the cross an act of love. Had he been blind to all that, it would have been worthless.

At the same time, truth without love also decays. It’s not just the words we say that make our statements true or false, it’s how we say them, and in what spirit; which is why it’s possible for us to combine true statements in such a way that those who hear us will draw a false conclusion. Without love, truth hardens, growing cold and brittle, like a coal removed from the fire; to say that God hates sin is to speak truth, but to say it without love is to give the very distinct impression that he hates sinners, too, which is most decidedly not true. Indeed, to grasp the truth that God hates sin without also understanding that he is love and that he loves all whom he has made is very likely to come to believe that God hates sinners.

The reason for this is that God is truth, and God is love, and neither truth nor love has any meaning or reality apart from him; and thus to sever one from the other is to sever both from their source. What’s left is something very much akin to cut flowers: they may retain their beauty, and they can be kept alive for a little while, but they’re dying. To have either truth or love, we must have both.

The American self-help legalist’s Bible

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You may not know this, but Thomas Nelson recently produced something called The American Patriot’s Bible:  The Word of God and the Shaping of America.  I wouldn’t have known it except that my wife recently signed up as a book-review blogger and ended up reviewing it.  This appears to be a product much akin to the recent Green Bible from HarperCollins, except that where the Green Bible pushes environmental dogma, the APB pushes a politically conservative form of what Christian Smith dubbed “moralistic therapeutic deism.”  As my wife wrote,

There is plenty to encourage the idea that what God wants from us is to work harder. There is nothing here for the broken, repentant sinner, aware of his own inadequacy, whose desperate hope is to fall at the foot of the cross and find grace.

When Jared Wilson writes about “the weird modern desire for legalism,” well, this appears to be the Bible to support that desire.  Thomas Nelson has not blessed the American church by producing it.

Lay down your specialness

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Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

—Philippians 2:5-11 (ESV)

I’m filling in right now for the regular leader of our Wednesday evening Bible study, leading those who come through Philippians (when he asked me to cover this period for him, we selected that together).  This evening, as we were working on 2:5-18, a couple dots connected for me that had never connected before, and I realized a bit more of the punch of this remarkable passage.

As you may know, the official Roman religion was emperor-worship, and its creed and sole tenet was “Caesar is Lord.”  The various emperors took their proclaimed divinity with varying degrees of seriousness, but they all valued it as the glue that held the empire together.  This, incidentally, is why Christians had such a rough time of it, because their insistence that Jesus alone is Lord made them a national security threat.  (Shades of Janet Napolitano.)

This is of particular importance in the letter to the Philippians because Philippi was a Roman colony, and thus everyone born in the city who was not born into slavery was a Roman citizen.  That put them ahead of most people who lived under Roman rule, for relatively few people in the empire had citizenship, and the difference in legal status between citizens and non-citizens was profound—only citizens could participate in political life (though they didn’t have the option of not doing so), and only citizens received the full protection of Roman law.  Being a citizen was thus a very big deal, and so since native free Philippians all had citizenship, they took great pride in this fact, and in their city.  Their sense of Roman identity, of both their civil rights and their civic responsibilities, was very strong, and Caesar-worship was very strong in the city as well.

This meant that Christianity was counter-cultural in Philippi to a much greater degree than in most of the rest of the Roman Empire.  In this passage, though, Paul pushes that even further.  You see, one of the rights of Roman citizens was that they could not be crucified; in fact, Cicero once wrote,

To bind a Roman citizen is a crime; to flog him is an abomination; to execute him is almost an act of murder; to crucify him is—what? There is no fitting word that can possibly describe so horrible a deed.

As you can see, Roman citizens had a very high opinion of themselves; by virtue of their status as citizens, they were quite certain they were better than every other class of people on the planet.  The idea of being crucified would have been unspeakably, nauseatingly horrifying to them—maybe even more from the psychic shock and the assault on their identity and self-image than from the physical agony.  They were too special to be treated like that.  And yet Paul says, in effect, “Sure, you’re special, you’re Roman citizens; but look at Jesus—he was even more special; he was God become human, and look what he did.  Now you go and do likewise:  do not consider your status as citizens something to hang onto, but make yourselves nothing, taking on the full reality of slaves, and humble yourselves even to the point of death on a cross, if it should come to that.”

Lay down your specialness for Jesus Christ, and in humility, serve others, even to the point of laying down your life.  That’s what it means to follow Jesus; that’s the road that leads to sharing his reward.

 

Photo © 2012 Tobias Lindman.  License:  Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

The gospel from the margins

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Now there were four men who were lepers at the entrance to the gate. And they said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die? If we say, ‘Let us enter the city,’ the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. So now come, let us go over to the camp of the Syrians. If they spare our lives we shall live, and if they kill us we shall but die.” So they arose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians. But when they came to the edge of the camp of the Syrians, behold, there was no one there. For the Lord had made the army of the Syrians hear the sound of chariots and of horses, the sound of a great army, so that they said to one another, “Behold, the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to come against us.” So they fled away in the twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses, and their donkeys, leaving the camp as it was, and fled for their lives. And when these lepers came to the edge of the camp, they went into a tent and ate and drank, and they carried off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them. Then they came back and entered another tent and carried off things from it and went and hid them.Then they said to one another, “We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news. If we are silent and wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us. Now therefore come; let us go and tell the king’s household.”

—2 Kings 7:3-9 (ESV)

This is a piece of a larger narrative that takes place during the reign of Jehoram, king of Israel, one of the sons of Ahab. You may remember King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, and how they were always at odds with the prophet Elijah. Ahab and his wife are both dead by this point, and Elijah has been taken up in the whirlwind; Jehoram reigns in Ahab’s place, and Elijah has been succeeded by his protégé, Elisha.

Jehoram’s actually not a bad king by Israel’s standards, as he generally treats Elisha with respect, but at the time of the story, things are going badly. Ben-Hadad, king of Aram—modern-day Syria—has invaded Israel and laid siege to the capital city, Samaria. This was on top of a famine in the land, and so there’s very little food in the city. In fact, things have gotten so bad that people are paying exorbitant prices for donkey heads and bird droppings just to have something to eat. It’s in this context that these four lepers decide that they might as well go see if they can surrender to the enemy; the worst that can happen is for the Arameans to kill them, and even then it’s likely to be a quick death—which is still better than starvation. And so they go down to the enemy camp, and what happens? They find it deserted. God has spooked the enemy, and the army has fled.

This is one of the great ironies of Israel’s history: four lepers, four outcasts, are now in possession of the good news of God’s deliverance. They are the heralds of salvation to a city they aren’t even allowed to enter, under normal circumstances. Indeed, the very fact that they were outcasts is what put them in position to make this discovery. Their first reaction is to keep it for themselves, but it doesn’t take them too long to wise up—and though their decision is partly pragmatic, it’s more than that, too; the desire to avoid getting in trouble plays its part, but the main reason they decide to bring their good news back to the city is that it’s the right thing to do. They had good news to report, and so they had the responsibility to share it with all those who needed it.

That’s where we as Christians find ourselves in these difficult times: we are those lepers. That can be hard for us to see, for a couple reasons, but it’s true. It’s hard to see, first off, because centuries of Christendom have covered our eyes to it—we aren’t used to seeing ourselves as marginal figures; we’re used to thinking of this as a Christian nation, and of ourselves as the majority and the mainstream. Demographically, that’s still true, but culturally, it really isn’t anymore, and practically speaking, it’s unhelpful; we need to realize that while the institutions of the church may still be prominent in this country, the message of the gospel—which is what the church is supposed to be about—is increasingly marginal, even among churchgoers. For the majority of people in this country, and in many congregations, “Christian” is defined roughly as being nice, being a pretty good person—or, to some people, being a royal hypocrite to pretend you’re better than everyone else when you’re not—going to church once in a while, and voting Republican. Oh, yeah, and liking Jesus. There’s not much more content to the cultural perception than that. If you start talking about the gospel, you might as well do it in the original Greek.

Like the lepers, we have been given good news to share with hungry people, and like them, if we tell people about it, we aren’t going to meet with automatic belief and acceptance. People want to hear “Follow us and all of your financial problems will be solved”—that’s the good news they’re hoping for—and unlike the lepers, we don’t have that message; we can’t promise people a return to what they’ve come to think of as the good life. Instead, what we have to offer is the faith of King Jehoshaphat: that when calamity and disaster come, if we will cry out to the Lord, he will hear us and save us. He doesn’t promise us prosperity in the midst of the meltdown, merely that he won’t let us be defeated by it. Which is not nothing, but isn’t necessarily what people are looking for, either. The good news we have to offer is much bigger and deeper than just financial prosperity; our responsibility is to help them see, by what we say and how we live, just what good news it is.

(Excerpted, edited, from “For Such a Time as This”)

The Obama administration and the criminalization of dissent

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I wrote a piece early last October laying out my thoughts as to what the Obama administration would look like, and what his presidency would bring. At some point, I intend to do a full-scale review of that post, evaluating what I got right and what I got wrong, but at this point I think I can call the shot on three connected predictions I made:  that Barack Obama’s talk of bipartisanship would be just empty words belied by a highly partisan administration, that Nancy Pelosi would run rampant, and (most worrisome), this:

I believe the approach we’ve seen from the Obama campaign to dissent and criticism will be repeated in the policies and responses of an Obama-led Executive Branch; given the clear willingness of his campaign to suppress freedom of speech to prevent criticism of their candidate, I believe we’ll see the same willingness from his administration and his chief congressional allies. This will mean a surge in the kind of the strongarm political tactics that we’ve already seen entirely too often this year. . . .

The Obama campaign’s efforts to shout down Stanley Kurtz and David Freddoso (in an effort to intimidate Chicago radio station WGN into canceling their appearances on Milt Rosenberg’s show) ought to be disturbing to anyone who cares about free speech. Of even greater concern should be the Obama “truth squads” in Missouri, where the campaign enlisted allies in public office to threaten prosecution of any TV station that runs any ads about Sen. Obama that the campaign deems untrue. Not only is this approach outrageously biased (one side’s allowed to lie, but the other isn’t?), it gets into some very grey areas about interpretation and intent, and thus raises some real concerns as to the approach an Obama Department of Justice might take to the First Amendment.

This kind of approach, like Joe Biden’s suggestion that an Obama/Biden administration might prosecute the Bush administration, is nothing more nor less than the use (or threat of use) of political power to punish one’s opponents, intimidate critics, and silence dissenters; it’s the sort of thing we’re used to seeing in Zimbabwe, not here—and as the case of Zimbabwe shows, there’s nothing, not even money, that can corrupt a democracy faster, or more severely. I’ve argued before that one of the great problems with our politics in this day and age is that we absolutize our own perspectives—we assume that our own perspectives and presuppositions are the only legitimate ones, and that those who disagree with us can’t possibly be doing so sincerely, but must be acting out of motives that are selfish or otherwise wrong. The criminalization of politics, which we’re starting to see urged by the Obama campaign, is a more extreme version of that problem, because it argues that those motives are not only wrong, but are in fact criminal in nature. The chilling effect of that sort of approach should be deeply worrisome not just to conservatives, but also to true liberals.

Unfortunately, it appears that many leftist Democrats aren’t true liberals, because President Obama has now invited just such prosecutions, and they don’t appear to be worried at all; to its credit, the Boston Globe did call out Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security for the egregious report that pretty much labeled all conservatives as potential terrorist threats, but an awful lot of Democrats seem to be just fine with it.  Indeed, many who were First Amendment absolutists who loved to wax lyrical about the importance of dissent back when there was a Republican in the White House now seem to think anyone who dares argue with the Anointed One should be drug out into the street and shot.

To repeat:  the willingness of those in power to deal with opposition by criminalizing policy differences—to use brute force as a tool for gaining and maintaining political power—is one of the things that makes places like Zimbabwe the basket cases that they are.  We cannot afford to allow such an approach to corrupt our system.  But even if concern for what’s best for the nation doesn’t restrain the Obama administration from such banana-republic tactics, enlightened self-interest should, as Matt Lewis memorably illustrated (HT:  Joshua Livestro):

There has been a lot of debate on the potential prosecution of Bush Administration officials who offered legal opinions supporting waterboarding—with some even calling for investigations of high-ranking officials like Dick Cheney. However, one thing that hasn’t been given the attention it deserves is the precedent it would set if we were to criminalize national security decisions. Hence, I’ve finally decided to test out the time machine I’ve been building in my basement—and you would be surprised what sort of things grew out of the current debacle.

For instance, the following Associated Press story was filed on April 23, 2013, and if it sounds Orwellian, well, it is:

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS TO FACE PROSECUTION

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department announced today that charges could be filed against numerous Obama Administration officials as a result of last year’s terror attack in Los Angeles. In announcing the indictments, Attorney General John Cornyn said that top officials showed “gross and purposeful negligence” by releasing perpetrators of the attacks from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and demanding that interrogation tactics be softened against chief planner Mehmet al-Meshugeneh, who had already revealed that a major attack was being planned against a major U.S. sporting event.

“By purposefully disregarding crucial intelligence, and in releasing known participants in the plot into Saudi custody, numerous government officials took action which made the Staples Center bombing possible,” Cornyn said. He went on to note that “numerous individuals in the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security knowingly pursued policies which would endanger the lives of Americans. They placed their political priorities above the safety of the citizens of this country, and thousands of innocent people died as a result. These people must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

At the White House, Press Secretary Adam Brickley said that President Sarah Palin stands firmly behind the decision. “It’s not as if we relish the thought of prosecuting members of the previous administration,” Brickley said, “but, at this point, there is a clearly established precedent—set in place by the Obama Administration themselves—which says that government officials must be held accountable if they contributed in any way to major breaches of the law. In this case, the individuals under investigation do appear to have purposefully allowed these terrorists to continue their actions—prioritizing international public opinion over the lives of the American people. So, while this may be a politically charged issue, there is a real need to prosecute.”

In the end, the sort of tactics the Obama administration has now begun to employ are ineffective at silencing dissent (as the case of Zimbabwe, along with many other nations, shows)—all they really do is raise the stakes enormously.  If you’re willing to start prosecuting your predecessors, you’re going to get the same treatment from your successors unless you can manage to do one of two things:  a) overthrow the Constitution so that you can become President-for-Life, or b) never make a significant mistake.  Taken all in all, I’d say the first is likelier, and neither exactly probable.

All of which is to say that Barack Obama and his senior staff and advisors would do well to remember, and live by, an ancient piece of wisdom:

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

—Matthew 7:12 (ESV)

Who has believed our report?

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See my servant: he shall accomplish his purpose;
     he will rise and be lifted up,
     and he shall be exalted most high.
Just as there were many who were shocked at him
     —one whose appearance was disfigured beyond that of any man,
     whose form beyond human likeness,
           so that his blood sprinkled many nations—
so kings shall shut their mouths because of him;
     for that which had not been told them they shall see,
           and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.
Who has believed our report?
               And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
        and like a root out of dry ground;
    he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
        nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised, lacking supporters,
        a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering;
    and as one from whom others hide their faces
               he was despised, and we thought him of no value.
Surely he has borne our suffering
        and carried our sorrows;
    yet we accounted him stricken,
        struck down by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced through for our rebellions,
        crushed for our iniquities;
    upon him was the punishment that reconciled us with God,
        and at the cost of his wounds we are healed.
All of us, like sheep, have gone astray;
        we have all turned to our own way,
    and the LORD has laid on him
               the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he allowed himself to be afflicted,
        yet he did not open his mouth;
    like a lamb that is led to the slaughter
        and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
        so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away;
        and as for his contemporaries, who realized
    that when he was cut down out of the land of the living,
        he was stricken for the rebellion of my people?
They made his grave with the wicked
        and his tomb with the rich,
    although he had done no violence,
               and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the LORD who willed to crush him, causing him to suffer.
    If you make his life an offering for sin,
        then he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days;
    the will of the LORD shall prosper through his work.
               Because of his anguish he shall see and be satisfied;
        by his knowledge, my righteous servant shall make many righteous,
        for he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him the many,
        and he shall divide the strong as the spoils of his victory,
    because he poured out himself to death,
        and was numbered among the sinners;
    yet he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors.

—Isaiah 52:13-53:12

God’s specialty: life out of death

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“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord:
look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.
Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you;
for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him.
For the Lord comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places
and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord;
joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.”

—Isaiah 51:1-3 (ESV)

There are a lot of folks in the church these days who are lamenting the state of American culture and saying pessimistic things about the future of this nation; I know this in part because there are days when I’m one of them.  I think, though, that we would do well to step back from that a bit and realize that while it certainly might well be all downhill from here for the USA, our pessimism on that point isn’t justified by our faith.  The unstated assumption behind that pessimism is that God can’t overcome the unrighteousness of Americans—and that just isn’t true.  On this point, we would do well to consider this passage from Isaiah, and think about it carefully.

“Listen to me,” says the Lord. “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek me; listen and look.” He’s addressing the faithful remnant within Israel—the people who are still seeking God and pursuing his righteousness, who have neither turned their backs on him nor rejected his servant. These are the ones who are willing to trust God—but even for them, it’s hard.

Indeed, maybe for them it’s especially hard, despite their faith, because they see their people’s dire situation much more clearly than their more secular friends and relatives. They can see beyond Israel’s physical exile to their much deeper and more serious spiritual exile, the distance of the people’s hearts from God, and their consequent spiritual barrenness and deadness; they can see past the obvious difficulty of Israel’s deliverance to the real difficulty that underlies it, and so they worry—not that God is unable to deliver his people, or that he doesn’t care enough to do so, as other Israelites do, but that the faithlessness of their people will somehow sabotage everything in the end anyway. They trust God, but they know better than to trust his people.

To them, God says, “Listen to me: look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn.” A quarry is not a place of life; nothing comes out of it but dead stone. This is an apt metaphor to describe Abraham and Sarah, the father and mother of their people, for Sarah was barren, and both were far past childbearing age; even now, with our advanced technology, we don’t see 90-year-olds having children. When God says, “When I called Abraham, he was but one,” he’s not kidding; and yet, as God points out, “I blessed him and made him many.”

The very foundation story of the family that became the nation of Israel is a story of God bringing life out of barrenness and deadness; that sort of miraculous birth is at the core of their national identity. “Trust me even in this,” God is saying, “because I’ve done even this for my people before.” What is now a wasteland, he will make “like Eden”—and this doesn’t just mean physical life, but also spiritual life, for Eden isn’t merely a physical paradise, it’s the place before sin, and before the curse of God that fell on us because of our sin.

As such, we should think long and hard before concluding that anyone, or any nation, is too messed up and too spiritually dead for God to revive.  God spoke, and a 90-year-old woman had a baby; he spoke, and a virgin bore a son.  He spoke, and Jesus who had been crucified rose from the dead.  What can he not bring to life, if he decides to speak?

(Partially excerpted from “The Herald of Salvation”)

A few tips of the hat

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We’re having some internet problems here—no connection at the church today at all, and a pretty poor one here at home—so I haven’t had much success with any online work; but I thought I might be able to get a relatively quick links post through.

Jared Wilson has a couple strong posts up, “The Kingdom is For Those Who Know How to Die” and “Faith, Hope, and Love is About Proximity to Jesus.” I’ve also been meaning to note his excerpt from Skye Jethani’s new book The Divine Commodity, which I think dovetails with my recent post on worship.

Not to leave the rest of the Thinklings out, Philip has a good post on communicating the gospel, Bird makes a good point about repentance, and Bill asks an interesting question:  is the American church actually too macho?

I love Hap’s retelling of the story of Abigail.  If you’re not familiar with it, you can find the original in 1 Samuel 25.

Pauline Evans, to whom I haven’t linked in far too long, has a nifty little post up on the development of computers, and how the comparisons we use are in some ways quite misleading; she also has one up, I just discovered, on a couple children’s fantasy books that I think I’m going to need to read.  (This may follow nicely on our recent discovery in this household of Tamora Pierce.)

Debbie Berkley posted something last January that I’ve kept meaning to write about, reflecting on the uncertainty we face these days in the light of the wisdom of a fellow Christian from India:  “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”  Sage counsel, and certainly no less applicable now, two months on.

And, on the subject of politics (and specifically political dirty tricks), Andrew Breitbart has had some interesting things to say of late about the online war liberals are waging (and winning) against conservatives.  Barack Obama promised to elevate the tone of political discourse in this country, but you don’t have to be a Sarah Palin supporter to recognize that some of his followers didn’t get the memo.

This isn’t everyone I’d like to mention, but I’m only linking to pages I can actually pull up, and it’s pretty hit-and-miss at the moment.  Still, I’m glad to note these, and maybe I’ll do another one soon to highlight the ones that wouldn’t come up.