Make It Make Sense

I came to play baseball but it looks like we're playing paintball

There’s an old story that goes something like this…

A porn shop burns down one night through mysterious circumstances. The owner of the porn shop takes the leadership of the church on the opposite corner to court, suing them for the destruction of his property. When the judge hears the case, the porn shop owner explains that the church had very publicly been praying for the destruction of his porn shop. They would pray for it to be destroyed in their Sunday service, they asked for the congregation to pray for it to be destroyed in their weekly newsletter and they would regularly organize public prayer marches around the outside of his porn shop praying out loud for God to destroy the porn shop. The church argued that there was no way they could be held financially responsible for the destruction of the man’s porn shop just because they had prayed for it to be destroyed.

In the judge’s ruling, she noted that porn shop owner seemed to have greater faith in God and the power of prayer than the local church and its leadership did.

I have thought about that old story as I read the comments on my last post in which I suggested the Church in the United States seems to have lost her prophetic imagination for peaceful, non-violent ways to end conflicts and respond to tyrannical governments. Loads of comments from people indicating they were people of faith in Jesus insisted that violence was, in some part, the role of government to “exact God’s vengeance” in the world. They insisted that God sometimes has used and uses “strong men” to execute God’s judgment against evil doers.

One of the theological mistakes I make that I am regularly corrected on is when I say that we can advance the kingdom of God or that our actions are a manifestation of the kingdom of God coming into the world. My theologically minded friends insist that human beings don’t have the capacity to advance or bring the kingdom of God into the world, that’s one of those things only God can do. I’m reminded that God does not need me and is quite capable bringing about God’s preferred future without human agents. If God requires my assistance or participation to achieve God’s purposes in the world, we’re in a troubling position.

The Old Testament is full of stories where the punchline is that the people of God put their trust in power and wealth and might and political allies and the size of their army – take Gideon as an early example – and God had to correct them. This “lesson” inspired lines we’ve incorporated into our worship, prophetic lines like: “It is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” And “Some nations boast of their chariots and horses, but we boast in the name of the Lord our God.” One of my favorites, that actually hangs on my home office wall, is from Isaiah 30. The prophet warns the people of God NOT to trust the strong men. Isaiah says, “…by trusting Pharaoh, you will be humiliated, and by depending on him, you will be disgraced. For though his power extends to Zoan and his officials have arrived in Hanes, all who trust in him will be ashamed. He will not help you. Instead, he will disgrace you.” A few verses later is the phrase that hangs on my wall, “In quietness and confidence is your strength.” What I love most about that passage is the context, because God, through Isaiah finishes it like this… “In quietness and confidence is your strength. But you would have none of it. You said, ‘No, we will get our help from Egypt. They will give us swift horses for riding into battle.’”

I’m also wondering how we became the people ordained by God to go to war and destroy the nations we feel threatened by. The posture of the early church seemed to be different. Paul tells the church in Rome, “Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”)” If Paul had a “Deus Vult” tattoo, it appears his understanding of what God wills for followers of Jesus was very different than those who assure us that God supports our dropping bombs on human’s created in God’s image.

I’ve also been surprised by the number of people who say they follow Jesus who have commented on my last post that Jesus came to save individual souls and call us to some kind of individual ethic that Jesus never intended nations to conform to things like the sermon on the mount or one of his other pithier commands to “love your enemy.” It was a Mugatu moment for me as I read one after another of such comments leading me to wonder just how many “crazy pills” I’d taken.

I used to lead worship in church and one of the songs I used to lead was written by sweet little Matt Redman and some friends and we sang this…

Can a nation be changed?
Can a nation be saved?
Can a nation be turned back to You?
Let this nation be changed
Let this nation be saved
Let this nation be turned back to You
We’re on our knees
We’re on our knees again

We had some sense that the revival we were hoping and praying and singing for would impact nations, not just individual hearts. We heard prophetic words about how the political leaders would be turning to the Church for guidance and wisdom. It’s hard to read the book of Revelation and have some sense from the Revelator that God is holding nations accountable and that God’s purposes involved the healing of the Nations, not just individual hearts. Jesus’ commission involves going to all the Nations – not simply some geographical direction but ethnic directions to reach people groups with the good news about Jesus and the kingdom coming. In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, woke Jesus warns the crowd that at the end of time the nations would be judged, not individual believers, with the Nations divided into two subgroups – those that did what love does, and those who did not.

The Christian and Jewish faith seem to be robust in their sense that Nations and people groups are much more the focus of what God is doing in the world rather than work among individual souls finding their own personal Jesus. Jonah and Nineveh are a classic example. It feels like a modern concept that God is not judging Nations by the standards of Jesus and the Gospel, it feels more like political ideology than biblical theology.

There’s another old sermon story that the comments on my last post had me thinking about, it goes like this:

There once was a man named Arthur who was very particular about his life. He kept his lawn trimmed to the millimeter, his house painted, and his evenings quiet. Unfortunately, Arthur lived next door to a man named Barnaby.

Barnaby was a loud, messy, and inconsiderate man. He played music late at night, let his weeds grow into Arthur’s flowerbed, and constantly bothered Arthur with nonsensical stories.

Arthur tried everything—talking to Barnaby, ignoring him, even politely asking him to stop—but nothing worked. Finally, feeling overwhelmed with resentment, Arthur went to his room, dropped to his knees, and prayed.

“Lord,” Arthur complained, “I can no longer bear it. Barnaby is a nuisance to my peace and a thorn in my side. He is lazy, rude, and disrespectful. How can you expect me to live next to such a difficult human being? Can you not take him away?”

There was a profound silence in the room. Then, Arthur felt a soft, calming impression upon his heart—a voice that was both gentle and incredibly profound.

“Arthur,” the voice said, “I know Barnaby is difficult. But I want you to consider that I have had to put up with that man for sixty years. If I can be patient with him, can you not, for a little while longer?”

A common thread that kept coming up in the comments on my last post was the invocation of the Iranian civilians murdered at the hands of their own, repressive government. Truly terrible. Truly evil. But it seems, in reading the comments, as if people making those comments – from a follower of Jesus perspective – were largely unaware of the number of their own citizens that Rome put to death for “insurrection.” Jesus references a similar slaughter in Luke 13 when Pilate murdered a number of Galileans worshipping at the Temple. Similarly, we could get a call back to Matthew 2 where Herod murders baby boys under 2 in an attempt to kill the infant the Wise Men came to worship. But the injunction of Jesus is never for the people of God to arm themselves against Rome and murder every uncircumcised person they encountered. Jesus didn’t teach the way of the Sadducees (collaboration) or the Zealots (violent opposition). He taught the way of love and peace.

Back to the porn shop.

The majority of responses I’ve received on my last post from people who follow Jesus just has me wondering if we really believe God is good and God is still powerful enough to intervene in the world when God decides to or whether our story has become one in which the plans and purposes of God can only get by with a little violence from his friends?