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“Because I have sinned against him, I will bear the Lord’s wrath. ” – Micah 7:9
If, like myself, you grew up in an American church, you have undoubtedly heard how “things have never been as bad as they are now.” For some sectors of the church, we are convinced that America is falling headlong down the steep hill of inequity and rolling to a stop on Satan’s back porch. We are sure that the world is collapsing, and we just have to hang on tightly before Jesus rescues us from the calamity.
Of course, I have heard this since I was five years old. Technically speaking, I suppose it could be true that every year is worse than the previous one, in a never-ending fondue fountain of dungitude. Seems somewhat unlikely though. Seems a little more likely that we just aren’t aware that things have been bad (arguably, much worse) at other points in history.
But for the sake of argument, let’s accept that it’s true. That this time, right here, right now is the worst in our country. The church is under attack, the people are more immoral than ever, believers are oppressed, and so forth. Why is that? What led to this situation?
IS IT I?
It’s pretty easy to point to unbelievers around us, and point the gnarled finger of blame in their direction. Surely it’s because of our righteousness, and they hate us for it, right? Surely, it’s because they hate Jesus in us. I mean, Jesus did say people would hate his followers, right? So if we are being attacked, that must mean we are following Jesus?
Or, and go with me on this, perhaps the struggles here are not from OUTSIDE the church at all. When Israel was struggling with its enemies, did God say “you know the problem, all those heathens out there are out of control”? Afraid not, my friends.
“Because I (Micah standing in for Israel) have sinned against him, I will bear the Lord’s wrath.”
Note the reason for Israel’s troubles – not the outsider, not the secular culture, not forcing Israel’s morality on someone else. Nope. It’s US. We are the ones falling away from God. We are the ones disregarding his commands. Judgement starts with the House of God.
Maybe the reason you feel that things are going so badly is because the church has been more concerned with preserving its comfort and safety than in actually following Jesus commands.
MAN IN THE MIRROR
If you truly believe that your country is falling from God, rather than blaming nonbelievers or the immoral culture, you might need to look in the mirror. We all do. Where have we (the church) and I (personally) fallen away from God’s direction? Am I showing love to the poor and the foreigner? Am I helping the orphan and widow in my city? Am I bringing peace by overlooking an offense? Would I rather be wronged than prove I’m right? If not, perhaps fighting the evil forces of the world isn’t the real war I should be focused on.
We need to focus on dying daily to ourselves. That is our calling. Not to fight for our rights. Not save our country. Not even to make sure God blesses us with wealth and comfort. We are called to serve others – our neighbors and our enemies. It’s pretty hard to serve someone if you are focused on defeating them.
If you really want to see God move, winning the culture war might be more about correcting the culture in your own heart than passing Christian laws.
Jesus’ parables are some of the most famous passages in the Bible, especially the Good Samaritan, the Sower, and the Prodigal Son. But Jesus gave us many parables, so why do we choose to just focus on a few? Is it just because they’re familiar? Why do we think of these as the “good” parables and others as the “minor” parables? I suppose we could argue that we tend to focus on the longer parables, but we also like the wheat and tares story, and that’s fairly short. So why is it we skip over some parables, like the Shrewd Manager or the Growing Seed?
Burning a bridge is the recurring daydream of everyone who has ever lived in the history of the universe.
Once upon a time, there was a young chap in the tender dating years of middle school, who happened to notice a young lady in one of his classes. Being the enterprising young man that he was, he proceeded to memorize her class schedule, in order to by coincidence wind up walking beside her in the hall. After several days of chickening out at the last minute, 0ur fearless hero asked the young lady if she was dating anyone, and received the encouraging answer of “not right now.” Emboldened, the amorous adventurer asked the poetic follow-up, “well, what about me?”
First off, little disclaimer for today: this is more of a “what if” question than a hardline stance. So, consider the idea like a burger from a new restaurant, and if you don’t like it, feel free to spit it out like a sandwich from Arby’s. So off we go.
I’ll be the first to admit that construction in any form is not my forte. Most of my projects end up looking they were completed by a blind gibbon who used his favorite pages from four different sets of instructions rather than rely on the “suggested” directions of any one project.
Here at EverydayDevotions, we use the McCheyne Bible Reading plan, which suggests reading four chapters a day from different sections of the Bible. One of the advantages to reading in this manner is that sometimes the passages work together in ways you might not notice if you read straight through the Word. It’s kind of like when you mix a bunch of sauces at the Mongolian grill – you know they’re awesome individually, but together they can create something truly epilicious.
Visit any high school (or, if you dare, middle school) in the United States and you will see two things – consumption of copious amounts of caffeine, and groups separating themselves from other groups. Academics, Goths, Emo, Drama, Athletes, Student Councilors, Artists, Musicians, and so forth and so on – they all have their own place to hang out, their own assigned dress code, often their own dialects, and their individual group attitudes. Like oil and water, the artists and the jocks cannot and shall not mix – that leads to oily art and no one wants that.
Think of an animal that starts with K. Now think of a continent.
Sometimes the ol’ English language is a little tricky for the Believer. Words have more than one meaning, or we use more than one word to say the same thing Which means we have words that can carry a negative connotation in one sense, and so we are hesitant to use it in its proper or positive way. Confused?
Without a show of hands, who here has managed to pray for more than ten minutes in row? Can anyone honestly say they’ve never fallen asleep in church before? Are you willing to admit that every once in a while, when you’re in a class or meeting, you are actually “re-watching” a movie on your internal movie screen rather than listening? Why is it so hard for us to focus?
There are a lot of downsides to getting older. Joints get creakier, bruises take about six years to heal, the increasing bran in the diet, fashion gets more ridiculous, music gets more baffling every year, and so forth. But one downside you rarely hear about is boredom. It seems that every “new” thing is just an “old” thing with new pants on. Did you know that certain scholars have argued that every story can be broken down into seven basic plots? True story.
Bookstores are full of books on leading; biographies of great leaders, methods of leading, new approaches to leading, new terms for leading (hello “team management”), and so forth and so on. It seems that everyone has this desire to be one of the drivers instead of one of the oxen. Naturally, being the best book in the bookstore, the Bible has a thing or two to say about leadership, and manages to get right to the heart of the matter in a few sentences. Convenient.
I am not a vegetarian.
Often in classrooms, particularly at the University level, teachers welcome and encourage discussion. It forces students to think and defend themselves, rather than just regurgitate information, which is a good thing as regurgitation in school is rarely positive. By most accounts, one of the first to really do this was Socrates, who asked repeated questions of his students (and challengers) to force them to explain their answers. (At which point they asked if he would like to try regurgitating hemlock. Some people don’t like critical thinking. ) The goal was not just to get answers, but to see if a student knew “why” answers were true, and if they could defend them.
Listen to any major athlete in the world, and you’ll often hear them talk about greatness. They want to score the most, eat that many hotdogs, win the most championships, set this or that record, etc. Even scouts will often say “this kid is driven, he really wants to be great.” Even our cereal tries to be GRRRRREEEEAAAT.
For most people, the goal for most communication is to keep it simple. Short sentences, little words, keep Latin to a minimum, etc. But anyone who’s been in a corporate or higher education environment will know that is not always the case. For some baffling reason, administrators like to make things sound more complicated than they really are. You never hear the word “money,” it’s always “resources.” People don’t “talk,” they “dialogue about the issues.” You don’t plan, you strategize. You don’t have a meeting, you network with personnel resources. You don’t eat a donut, you process wheatified carbohydrate energy configurations.
Richard Dawkins, a well-known atheist, once told an audience that non-believers should not be polite when confronting Christians:
There’s nothing like a good pair of jeans. They’re tough, they fit just about any fashion sense, and over time they seem to contour themselves right to your country hams. It’s like nature’s perfect material.
It’s interesting how fascinated we are by war. We write poems about it, make stirring and heroic movies about it, and create imaginary wars when we’re kids. We use war and battle for metaphors in sports (“those linemen are doing some heavy battle down in the trenches”), and even use war as a symbol for relationships (on occasion, of course).
When we first meet our good friend Jacob, he forces his starving brother Esau to fork over his inheritance before he gives him a snack. Nice guy. Then he bamboozles his father into giving him the blessing that should have belonged to Esau. Even nicer. When his loving elder sibling understandably wants to throw Jacob in front of some stampeding buffalo, Jacob has to run to away from home, and right into the arms of his uncle Laban, a man who also never met a con he didn’t like.
For the most part, the Bible is fairly reasonable with all the commandyness. Don’t murder, don’t steal, keep God first, etc. Most of it is pretty straightforward. But every once in a while, you’ll run across one like the one today that makes you wonder if perhaps Moses misheard what God said, or couldn’t read his own tablet-writing. “Don’t boil a goat in its mother’s milk.” Was this really a problem in those days? And such a problem that it had to be placed right next to rules about sacrifices and honoring the Sabbath?
When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform a sign of some sort. – Luke 23:8
Tell us what we should say to him; 
We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. – 2 Corinthians 6:3
People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. – Luke 17:27
When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” – Exodus 13:17
Cynicism can be a good thing. When a man shows up at your door, offering discount meat at half the price of the supermarket, it might do both you and your intestinal tract good to be a little suspicious. If an athletic celebrity tells you to take a pill or two and suddenly have a six-pack, you may save a few bucks by hesitating. And let’s not forget the occasional email from Nigerian royalty
It’s hard to comprehend how people can say the Bible is boring. “Outdated” I can understand; “irrelevant” I can see; “difficult to understand” I can sympathize. But “boring”? Really? If people say the Bible is boring, generally one can assume they’ve never actually read it. Let’s take Genesis 34. (and quick caveat – this one is not really for the kiddos. Be forewarned.)
Life can be confusing. People want their kids to behave in public, but get mad when you poke one of theirs with a cattle prod. Neighbors don’t want to be late for work, but get mad when you’re helpful enough to let your dogs out to wake them up on time. They want to diet, but get upset when you knock their cheesecake out of their hands in the buffet line. Some people are just never happy.
