Monthly Archives: December 2008

Government aid: the real “trickle-down economy”

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Liberals react to times of conservative ascendancy in economic policy by deriding the “trickle-down economy”; even in times such as these which are far from that, you can see this derision lurking behind liberal critiques of the Wall Street rescue package.  The irony of this is that, as Thomas Sowell has pointed out, the modern liberal approach to helping the poor is actually its own form of trickle-down economics—the only difference is that the substrate through which the money trickles is government rather than the private sector.  This might seem like a minor difference, but it really isn’t.  In the private sector, the people at the bottom are in the same system as the people in the middle levels; in the government sector, they aren’t.  Thus, in the private sector, as the money trickles down to the folks in the lowest-paying jobs, it helps create new higher-paying jobs, opening up opportunities for those folks to move up the ladder and make more money.  In the government sector, as the money trickles down to be paid out to clients, it also helps create new government jobs—which benefits people in government, but does not create opportunities for those on the bottom (in most cases, at least).Thus the key is that “trickle-down economy” is really a misnomer as applied to the private sector, because what really matters isn’t the movement downward but the opportunities it creates for movement upward as it opens cracks in the substrate.  It is, however, an accurate descriptor of the government-assistance economy—and thus it’s here that we really hit the reality that expecting money to trickle down to those in need is a highly inefficient way to distribute it.  As Michael Novak writes, citing Sowell, in the latest First Things (excerpted here—it’s not even up on the site yet),

if you add up all the money that Congress has designated for the relief of the poor, the total turns out to be more than would be required simply to give every poor family some $30,000 in cash per year. Another way to look at it: Most of the American poor already have significant income, if not quite enough to lift them above the poverty level. If one calculates the gap between the financial benefits they already enjoy and the full sum that would lift them above the poverty level, it turns out to be a much smaller amount than is currently designated to be spent for their benefit. As the economist Thomas Sowell writes, to try to feed the swallows by feeding the horses is an immensely inefficient way to get help to the swallows. The middlemen in poverty programs often fare far better than the poor. Direct cash grants might be far more efficient.

I think they would, especially since (as Barack Obama has already proposed, and George McGovern before him) the disbursement could be handled through the IRS; you’d want some sort of sliding scale at the top end so as not to provide people with a powerful incentive to remain officially poor, but a grant program like this that was funded by the complete abolition of the federal welfare bureaucracy would be, I suspect, both more efficient and more effective than the programs we have now.  It would also have the advantage of transparency, and thus intellectual honesty, about what the government is really doing here:  namely, taking money from some people to give to others.  Doing both in terms of the tax code would provide much greater clarity about how much, and to whom, and on what basis.  Given these advantages, I think this would be a proposal conservatives could gladly support.

Time for damage control?

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According to the Chicago Sun-Times (your source for all the sordid details about Chicago politics that the media didn’t want you to know before November 4),

President-elect Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is reportedly on 21 different taped conversations by the feds—dealing with his boss’ vacant Senate seat!

As Hugh Hewitt notes,

Given Emanuel’s deserved reputations for smarts and toughness, it is likely he wasn’t approached by Blago on the pay-to-play conspiracy, but the prospect of blunt talk between the congressman and the governor about many subjects and people has to be unsettling to the president-elect and his most important aide.

Unfortunately for the incoming administration, once he’s indicted, Blagojevich is entitled to copies of all those tapes as part of the government’s responsibility to disclose all the evidence against him, which means that

the prospect of slow, selective leaking of parts of the exchanges is part of the calculation about political damage now underway at the office of the president-elect. The president-elect would be best served by calling on the U.S. Attorney to release any and all tapes between any of his advisor or staff and Blagojevich and his staff. Better to get all of the shop talk, however salty, out early and completely than drip by drip over the next few months.

It will be interesting to see if Barack Obama (or Rep. Emanuel) is savvy enough to do exactly that, or if the Obama team will instead follow the example of most politicians by turtling up and hoping for the best.  In most cases, that’s a disastrous strategy which only maximizes the damage; however, given that during the campaign, the media made it work for the Obama team by sweeping everything under the rug as fast as they possibly could, they may well be tempted to try it again here.  In this case, given that there’s a federal investigation involved, it isn’t likely to work, but you never know.

The overwhelming coming of God

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The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 
It is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”—
“a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”
And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins.

—Mark 1:1-4For God to be born as a human being was a wonderful thing for this world; it was also a deeply perilous thing for us. John the Baptizer understood this, and the writers of the Scripture understood this, even if we too often don’t. That’s why we have this curious little thing here in Mark, which I highlighted in this post: he says, “As it is written in Isaiah,” and then he doesn’t quote Isaiah, he quotes Malachi. It’s only after he’s thrown Malachi in there that he gets to Isaiah. The folks who like to look for errors and contradictions in Scripture jump all over this one, but the truth is, this is no mistake.It is, rather, the first example of a structure Mark uses in a number of places in his gospel—scholars call them “sandwiches,” in a rare example of a technical term which is actually intelligible.  By way of illustration, you can find another in Mark 11, in his telling of the story of the cursing of the fig tree.  Jesus curses the fig tree, it withers, and he uses that to teach the disciples a lesson. But Mark doesn’t tell that story straight through; instead, he separates it, and in between, he puts the story of the cleansing of the temple. The cursing of the fig tree “sandwiches” this story. Mark does this to give added emphasis to the cleansing of the temple, and to tell us that these two events belong together—we can’t really understand one of them without understanding the other one.It’s the same thing here. Mark says, “As it is written in Isaiah . . . the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’” But he doesn’t leave this in one piece—he separates it, and in between the two halves, he puts Malachi 3:1.  It’s jarring—intentionally so, I think—as an audience expecting the great promise-proclamation of Isaiah 40 (because what else would he be quoting, given the context?  They knew their Scripture) gets instead the foreboding of judgment of Malachi 3, and the message that we can’t take Isaiah’s hope without Malachi’s warning.God came to earth, and is coming again, to deliver us from the power of sin and death, and to bring an end to all oppression and injustice; but we cannot imagine ourselves to be guiltless in this respect, and so as part of this, he comes to cleanse and refine his people, washing and burning away all our impurities.  Thus Malachi asks rightly, “Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears?” because even for those who love and fear him, his coming will not be easy—it will be overwhelming.  He will come not to affirm us as we are as wonderful people, but rather to purify us—to complete the work of smelting away all the slag and the dross in our lives.  In the face of that, who can stand? None of us. Not even one. The good news is, though, we don’t have to.  As the singer-songwriter Sarah Masen put it, “The fool stands only to fall, but the wise trip on grace.” All we can do is cast ourselves on the grace of God, on the price paid for us by Christ on the cross; all we can do is lay all of ourselves at his feet and let him refine us and purify us until we can bear his joy, his love, his goodness, his holiness, his peace.(Excerpted, edited, from “Who Can Stand?”)

Birds, bees, and guinea pigs

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Most days, the route I take to and from the church takes me past one of our town’s pet shops; and for the last while, one side of their sign has been advertising “BABY GUINEA PIGS & STARTER KITS.”  Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t a starter kit for a baby guinea pig be a mommy and daddy guinea pig?Just wondering.

The perilous presence of God

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I learned a lesson last week: preaching on waiting can be just as dangerous as praying for patience. I told the congregation that we need to learn to see waiting not as wasted time but rather as a productive part of God’s work in our lives, and I guess he decided to put me to the test on the subject—I think I got to know every single one of the slowest drivers in this county on a first-license-plate basis. I spent the week waiting on the folks who don’t turn right on reds, and the ones who don’t go when the light turns green; I found myself behind one driver after another who was afraid to get within five miles an hour of the speed limit, except when God decided I needed a little variety and put me behind a guy going ten under. It was rather frustrating—at least until I realized God had made me my own sermon illustration, and then I was able to laugh at it.For all the inherent risks, though, I decided to keep talking about this, because God does make us wait, and it’s important for us to understand why; it’s important that we see this as part of God’s work, and resist being tempted into finding something else to do. In our society in which the most-pressed button in the elevator is the “door close” button because we can’t wait ten seconds for it to close by itself, we need to understand who and what we’re waiting for, and that the waiting is necessary to prepare us for his coming. It’s necessary because without the work God does in us while we wait, we won’t be able to endure it when he comes.We have a tendency to miss that, because the images we have of Christmas are such beautiful and non-threatening ones—“mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild,” with the animals watching cutely nearby. In our imaginations, even the shepherds are sanitized. Christmas is a joyous celebration, so our natural instinct is to make it safe and happy and fun, with no sharp edges anywhere in sight. The thing is, though, the coming of Jesus wasn’t like that, and his second coming won’t be either. One of the things I most appreciate about Narnia is the way in which C. S. Lewis captures this—when Aslan appears, it’s always a wonderful thing, but it’s never easy or merely pleasant, even for those who love him best; as Mr. Beaver says of him, he’s good, but he isn’t safe.Indeed, he isn’t safe precisely because he’s good; this is why, as is so often said of him, he isn’t a tame lion. True goodness, true joy, true holiness, true love—anything which is an aspect of the character of God—these are all wonderful things, but also very perilous, because they’re powerful and deeply real; the petty parts of us, our shameful little desires and our selfish whims, cannot endure their presence. There’s a real pain that comes with any sort of intense encounter with God, or with someone who is very close to God, as those parts of ourselves are burned away or driven into hiding—or roused to fight back. This is what the judgment and wrath of God really mean: not that he picks people out and punishes them because he doesn’t like them, but simply that to our sinful natures, the goodness and holiness and love and joy and peace of God, all of his character, are intolerably painful; we can either choose to draw close to him, and allow his presence to purge us of our sin, or we can cling to our sin, and be purged of his presence.  God loves us as we are, but he cannot leave us as we are if he is to bring us to himself—we would never survive the experience.(Excerpted, edited, from “Who Can Stand?”)

The best argument I’ve seen for the auto bailout

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comes from Jonathan Rauch, writing in National Journal; having spent considerable time recently around General Motors for a story on the Chevy Volt, Rauch has seen quite a lot of the company’s culture and internal processes, and his report suggests a strong possibility that a government loan might actually work—that the company (and, one hopes, also Ford and Chrysler) might be able to use the time the loan would buy them to finish making the changes they need to make to compete on an equal footing with the rest of the world’s auto manufacturers.  Rauch writes,

Today, GM’s factories are only about 6 percent less efficient than Toyota’s, according to Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm, and the remaining gap will shrink as new labor agreements kick in. The company’s cars are winning awards and critical plaudits. The 2008 Chevy Malibu, a hit with both buyers and analysts, represents a breakthrough: a midsize sedan that can go toe-to-toe with Toyota’s ubiquitous Camry without flinching. Whether GM can consistently replicate the Malibu and other recent successes remains to be seen, but the vehicles in the pipeline look promising. . . .What I found this year was a far cry from complacency. The ranks of line executives and engineers are thick with members of the Obama generation, who barely remember when GM was fat and happy. They are hungry to change the beleaguered company and prove its critics wrong. They are also piercingly critical of the old GM, candid to the point of eagerness in owning up to and analyzing the company’s mistakes and faults. The decades of denial are over.To succeed they will need a healthy balance sheet. Here, the problems are with legacy costs: uncompetitive pensions and benefits, rigid labor contracts, too many brands and dealers, and so on. The good news is that the company has succeeded at reducing its structural costs. It has shed more than 40 percent of its jobs and about 1,000 dealers since 2004; negotiated fully competitive wage scales for new hires; extinguished the Oldsmobile brand; and transferred retirement and health costs to its unions. The bad news is that those changes were sufficient only if everything went right economically.In its rescue proposal to Congress, GM practically begged for a strong federal overseer with the power to force unions, dealers, and creditors to accept further retrenchment. GM wants the stick of a bankruptcy-like arrangement without the stigma of the real thing. In principle, a federal bailout could give GM a hard push into the future by wrenching its balance sheet into alignment with reality.

I don’t know if I’m convinced, but I think we all need to think about this very carefully.  The most important consideration here is that the automakers aren’t simply asking for money to prop up business as usual.  Rather, as Paul Hinderaker puts it,

GM is asking for the stick of a bankruptcy-like arrangement without the stigma of the real thing. The bailout issue boils down to whether it makes sense to grant this. Bankruptcy provides a bigger, more effective stick, but it is not without risk. GM might not survive the loss of confidence associated with a bankruptcy, and its failure could take down much of the supplier base, with severe consequences for the larger economy.

This is not a possibility to be taken lightly; there’s a real risk in giving the automakers the loan they’re asking for, but there’s a real risk in not doing so as well.  The core question here is the potential reward for each risk, and the likelihood of that reward materializing.  There seems to me to be no doubt that the best-case scenario is of GM, Ford and Chrysler solving their competitiveness problems to the point where they can build better cars than their competition at an equivalent cost; the issue is which path is most likely to get us to that point, and what the downsides are for each if it doesn’t.  There’s no way to be sure, but for his part, it’s clear which way Rauch leans:

Whether a bailout can save GM depends, then, on which GM you think you’re bailing out, the calcified shell of the old GM or the new-economy company struggling to emerge. Given the record, counting on GM to succeed would be rash. But consigning it to fail might be even more so.

Mark 1 in context

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Isaiah 40:1-11                                                                     Malachi 2:17-3:6
Mark 1:1-4

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God.
“Encourage Jerusalem, proclaim to her
                          that her hardship has been completed, 
                                         that her sin has been paid for—
             that she has received from the LORD’s hand 
                                         double for all her sins.”
You have wearied the LORD with your words. 
“How have we wearied him?” you ask?
 By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the LORD,
and he is pleased with them,” or,
“Where is the God of justice?” 
“See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.
 Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple;
the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,”
says the LORD Almighty.
A voice is calling,
                          “In the desert, clear a path for the LORD;
              make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.
Let every valley be lifted up,
                            every mountain and hill be brought low;
                let the hilly place be a plain,
                            and the mountain ranges a wide valley.
The LORD’s glory will be revealed
                          and all people will see it together,
              because the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

But who can endure the day of his coming?
 Who can stand when he appears?
 For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.
 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver;
he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.
 Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness,
and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD,
as in days gone by, as in former years.

A voice says, “Call out!”—
                          and one answers, “What shall I call out?
              All people are grass,
                          and all their mercy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers,
                         the flower fades,
              because the breath of the LORD blows on it.”
“Yes, the people are grass—
                         ‘the grass withers,
                                           the flower fades’—
              but the word of our God will stand forever.”
Go up on a high mountain, Zion who brings good tidings;
                         lift up your voice in a shout, Jerusalem, bearer of good news.
              Lift up your voice, do not fear;
                         say to the cities of Judah,
                                           “Look, your God!”

“So I will come near to you for judgment.
I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers,
against those who defraud laborers of their wages,
who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice,
but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.
 “For I the LORD do not change;
therefore you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  
It is written in Isaiah the prophet,“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”—
“a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins.

Another church burning

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this one a bit higher-profile than most because it’s Sarah Palin’s church, Wasilla Bible Church; the fire is estimated to have caused $1 million in damage.  There is, of course, already speculation that the arson was political in nature, but as John Hinderaker of Power Line notes, “There are many possible motives, and arsonists don’t necessarily need what would normally be regarded as a motive.”  What he doesn’t say but is worth adding is that church burning has been an increasingly common crime in recent years; it’s not at all necessary to explain this arson in political terms.  Indeed, even if the church was selected because Gov. Palin attends there, the motive might not have been any sort of animus against her; it might simply be that her high profile attracted the attention of someone who otherwise would have burned a different church.  We’ll probably never know one way or the other unless the arsonist is caught, and for now, any speculation is unwarranted; we just need to pray for the leaders and people of Wasilla Bible Church for their recovery from this attack.

Who Can Stand?

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(Isaiah 40:1-11, Malachi 2:17-3:6; Mark 1:1-8)

I learned something this week:  preaching on waiting can be just as dangerous as praying for patience. I’ve spent the week waiting on the folks who don’t turn right on reds, and the ones who don’t go when the light turns green, and the drivers who are afraid to get within five miles an hour of the speed limit. But you know what? I’m going to keep talking about this anyway, because it’s important for us to understand why we’re waiting, and not let ourselves be tempted into finding something else to do. In our society in which the most-pressed button in the elevator is the “door close” button, because we can’t wait ten seconds for it to close by itself, we need to understand who and what we’re waiting for, and that the waiting is necessary to prepare us for his coming.

We have a tendency to miss that, because the images we have of Christmas are such beautiful and non-threatening ones—“mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild,” with the animals watching cutely nearby. In our imaginations, even the shepherds are sanitized. Christmas is a joyous celebration, so our natural instinct is to make it safe and happy and fun, with no sharp edges anywhere in sight. The thing is, though, the coming of Jesus wasn’t like that, and his second coming won’t be either. One of the things I most appreciate about Narnia is the way in which C. S. Lewis captures this—when Aslan appears, it’s always a wonderful thing, but it’s never easy or merely pleasant, even for those who love him best; as Mr. Beaver says of him, he’s good, but he isn’t safe.

Indeed, he isn’t safe precisely because he’s good; this is why, as is so often said of him, he isn’t a tame lion. True goodness, true joy, true holiness, true love—anything which is an aspect of the character of God—these are all wonderful things, but also very perilous, because they’re powerful and deeply real; the petty parts of us, our shameful little desires and our selfish whims, cannot endure their presence. There’s a real pain that comes with any sort of intense encounter with God, or with someone who is very close to God, as those parts of ourselves are burned away or driven into hiding—or roused to fight back. This is what the judgment and wrath of God really mean: not that he picks people out and punishes them because he doesn’t like them, but simply that to our sinful natures, the goodness and holiness and love and joy and peace of God, all of his character, are intolerably painful; we can either choose to draw close to him, and allow his presence to purge us of our sin, or we can cling to our sin, and be purged of his presence.

This means that for God to be born in the world as a human being was a wonderful thing, yes, but also a terrible thing. John the Baptizer understood this, and the writers of the Scripture understood this, even if we too often don’t. That’s why we have this curious little thing here in Mark, something which you probably noticed: he says, “As it is written in Isaiah,” and then he doesn’t quote Isaiah, he quotes Malachi. It’s only after he’s thrown Malachi in there that he gets to Isaiah. The folks who like to look for errors and contradictions in Scripture jump all over this one, but the truth is, this is no mistake.

What you have to understand is that Mark has this habit of making what we call “sandwiches” in his gospel (sorry for the technical terminology), and this is a classic example. You can find another in Mark 11. Jesus curses the fig tree, it withers, and he uses that to teach the disciples a lesson. But Mark doesn’t tell that story straight through; instead, he separates it, and in between, he puts the story of the cleansing of the temple. The cursing of the fig tree “sandwiches” this story. Mark does this to give added emphasis to the cleansing of the temple, and to tell us that these two events belong together—we can’t really understand one of them without understanding the other one. It’s the same thing here. Mark says, “As it is written in Isaiah . . . the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’” But he doesn’t leave this in one piece—he separates it, and in between the two halves, he puts Malachi 3:1.

To see what he’s doing here, let’s look first at Isaiah 40. To really understand Isaiah 40, you have to know what comes immediately before it. In Isaiah 39:6-7, the prophet gives this word to King Hezekiah: “The time is coming when everything you have—all the treasures stored up by your ancestors—will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the LORD. Some of your own descendants will be taken away into exile, and they will be made eunuchs who will serve in the palace of Babylon’s king.” It was a prophecy of complete disaster, and it fell on Judah early in the 6th century BC; the country was conquered by Babylon, Jerusalem left in ruins, most of the population carried off in exile, and its kings imprisoned for their pathetic attempts to rebel.

But that bad news could not be the last word. What of the promise God had made to David that his descendants would rule Israel forever? What of Isaiah’s own prophecies of hope? And so God gave Isaiah a great word of hope and deliverance, to be sealed up until the proper time had come. God would judge his people, but in time he would relent. “Comfort, comfort my people,” he declares. “Encourage Jerusalem; my people are afraid of me now, but tell them that their time of hardship is over. Their sins have been paid for, and I have given them a full pardon.” You will note that this text doesn’t say that they have suffered long enough to pay the price for their sins themselves; rather, someone else has paid the price for their sins, and in response God has lifted their sentence.

Next, another voice calls out: one of God’s angels announcing a road to be built for God through the wilderness. This is to be a mighty road, a freeway through the desert, and nothing will stand in its way: the Lord is going to Babylon to bring his people home. The valley floors will be raised, the great peaks flattened; hilly areas will be turned into plains, and great passes opened through the mountains. When he led his people out of Egypt, God reached down and parted the sea to make a road for his people; now, in going to bring his people back out of Babylon, he will do the same to the wilderness, turning all its danger and chaos into a safe, wide road for his deliverance. The glory of the Lord will be revealed to Israel and the world as he brings his people home.

After this great declaration, another voice commands, “Call out!” The Lord has promised to deliver his people—spread the news! Shout it from the rooftops! But the reply comes back cynical and bitter: “Why bother? This is never going to happen. People are nothing but grass in the desert; all their love, mercy, loyalty, commitment are as fragile as flowers in the field. The first hot wind comes along, and they shrivel up and die.” The word translated “mercy” there is the Hebrew word hesed, which is one of those great Old Testament words that is just too big for any English word; it gets variously translated as “mercy,” “covenant mercy,” “lovingkindness,” “covenant loyalty,” etc. It is the word used of the love of God in his covenant faithfulness to his people, and carries the idea of his unchanging reliability; it is love in action, steadfast love that always keeps its promises, and unswerving loyalty and faithfulness. The idea is that our own attempts at hesed last only until the first challenge comes, and then they wither.

This bitter, cynical word had to be spoken because it had to be answered—and it is; the first voice replies, “Yes, everything you say is true, but that doesn’t matter. This is God’s word, he has promised, and his word will not fail; his word endures forever.” Deliverance, you see, isn’t based on our ability to earn it; it comes because God is faithful to keep his promises. Of course, everyone needs to know this is happening, and so the command comes to Jerusalem, Mt. Zion, to spread the word. Jerusalem had heard the news that God was bringing his people home, and her responsibility now was to pass it on to all the cities of Judah: “Look, God is coming!” The Lord returns to Jerusalem in power, bringing his people back with him as his reward, and caring for them as a good shepherd cares for his sheep.

What Isaiah’s talking about is, obviously, a wonderful and joyful moment: the Lord is coming to reveal his glory to the world by delivering his people from exile, and all will be well again. In Malachi, however, the picture is much less joyful. The Lord will send a messenger to prepare his way, and then he himself will appear; but rather than celebrating, the prophet asks, “Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears?” God will come to cleanse and refine his people, washing and burning away all their impurities. He will judge the wicked, those who do not fear him; and even for those who do, his coming will not be easy—it will be overwhelming.

There are certainly aspects to this passage that are clearly positive. For one, there is the assurance that the Lord does not change. Just as in Isaiah, it is made clear that God’s people will be preserved and can trust him to do what he says he will do, because he is faithful even if his people aren’t. He will purify his people so that their offerings are acceptable to him, and in the end, all things will be as they should be. His coming, however, will be a time of judgment as well as of rejoicing, and thus his herald will bring a message of warning and judgment as well as of promise and deliverance.

This is what we see in John the Baptizer, who came preaching a message that has been summarized as “Repent or else!” That’s probably an oversimplification, but it does go to the core of what John had to say; the gospel writers’ one-sentence version of John’s ministry is that he came “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” He called his hearers to radical repentance, to rebuild their lives from the ground up on the will of God, and challenged them to give away whatever they could to those in need. John’s central theme was that the Lord was coming as he had promised, and that people had better get ready; like Malachi, he emphasized that the coming of the Lord would bring judgment as well as joy. Those who repented of their sins and sought to follow him would be blessed, but those who refused would be destroyed.

The thing is, though, as Malachi points out, that even for the faithful, even for those who longed for the Lord’s coming, it would not be easy, and it will not be easy when he comes again, because he is coming to purify us—to complete the work of smelting away all the slag and the dross in our lives. “Who can stand?” the prophet asks? None of us. Not even one. The truth is in a line written by the singer-songwriter Sarah Masen: “The fool stands only to fall, but the wise trip on grace.” All we can do is cast ourselves on the grace of God, on the price paid for us by Christ on the cross; all we can do is lay all of ourselves at his feet and let him refine us and purify us until we can bear his joy, his love, his goodness, his holiness, his peace.

That’s not an easy thing to think about; but as you think about it, remember that he seeks to refine us like silver. Why is that significant? Well, it’s captured best by a story that’s told—I don’t know where it comes from, but I’ve done some research and verified the details—about a group of women who were doing a Bible study on Malachi, of whom one made an appointment with a silversmith to watch him work. As she watched, he held a piece of silver over the fire to heat up, and he explained that in refining silver, it’s necessary to hold it in the middle of the fire, where it is hottest, in order to burn away the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot, and remembered that Malachi says that the Lord will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. She asked the silversmith if he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. He said yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver in place, he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver were left in the flames even a moment too long, it would be ruined. The woman was silent for a moment, then asked, “How do you know when the silver is fully refined?” The silversmith smiled at her and said, “I know it’s done when I see my face reflected in it.”

This, you see, is what Christ is doing in us; it’s the process we’re waiting for him to complete in our lives, and in the life of our world, when he returns, and it’s what he’s doing in us now as we wait, and through our waiting.

On this blog in history: November 1-20, 2007

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Continuing the retrospective posts . . .. . . and it’s not even fake Carson
An occasion for dispute between John Stackhouse and D. A. Carson provided an occasion to consider an unfortunate trend in disputes among Christian academics.Midway between luck and skill
On the Battle of Midway and the providence of God.The spirit of the soul
Lynn Redgrave, thumos, and how we face death.Ministry as trinitarian work
After I finished Andrew Purves’ book The Crucifixion of Ministry: Surrendering Our Ambitions to the Service of Christ, I went on to Stephen Seamands’ book Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service, which had been on my to-read list for a while; the two books complement each other wonderfully, I think, as Dr. Seamands’ work sets the message of Dr. Purves’ book in a trinitarian context.