The Wisdom of a God Who Forbids Leaders Who Love Money

Sometimes I wonder if we fight so hard for the literality of Genesis 1 and 2 because those chapters ask so little from our daily lives. Whether the “yom” of Genesis was a 24-hour period or an extended season—whether the “aphar” was literal dust or some sort of material entity into which the imago Dei was breathed—we can still walk away from these passages challenged to change very little about how we operate day in and day out.

Both Old Earth Creationism and Young Earth Creationism mandate that God is all-powerful and sovereign. Both Old Earth Creationism and Young Earth Creationism mandate that the Bible is inerrant and trustworthy. Despite the claim of certain modern apologists--that a six/twenty-four model of creation is pivotal for the validity of Christendom--in practical reality, the issue has made little to no impact on discipleship or evangelism over the past few decades.

Despite the nervous twittering of YEC’s, Tim Keller (theistic evolutionist) has fought boldly for the inerrancy of Scripture and the glory of God. By every analytical means, his ministry has greatly outpaced the efforts of Ken Ham. While Ham has nitpicked and fussed, warning us sternly that Old Earth Creationism is destined to undermine the Bible--Keller has moved forward in faith, utilizing his background in philosophy, history, and reformed theology to help thousands embrace a complex and glorious God.

Watching this struggle has left me exasperated. Why are masses of Christians so willing to follow fear? Why are they so eager to major on the minors? Why do we believe leaders who create multi-million dollar empires by corralling us into seminars in which we lambast straw men? Why are believers are notorious for abandoning responsible methods of literary criticism, cherry picking verses that support their biases?

And why am I also so eager to do this. Why am I so quick to cite verses that emphasize my own values and so slow to rehearse passages that challenge the sins I would rather protect?

This morning, I was thinking about a command that is particularly embedded in modern, Western Christianity. This command appears in I Timothy 3:3, in the midst of a section describing qualities necessary for church leaders. The prohibition is clear--men who love money are forbidden from participating in Christian leadership.

Let the shock of that settle into your bones. In a list of warnings about the sexually immoral, the drunkard, and the violent--the man who simply enjoys having a lot of money is presented as equally dangerous to the church.

Does it feel like that prohibition is out of place to you? Can loving wealth really be as big of a threat as substance abuse, perversion, or physical aggression? Loving money is funny. It’s as neutral and as prevalent as gluttony. Pastors who would never make jokes about homosexuality get a weekly guffaw from cracks about overeating at the potluck and wanting new car or a raise.

If God said these things were sins, we disagree with him. We know what’s REALLY wrong, and loving the dollar isn’t on that list.

I grew up inside of an evangelicalism that had hard and fast ties to cultural power and wealth. For years, I loved Samaritan’s Purse without being bothered that Franklin Graham receives nearly a million dollars salary a year. I assumed he was doing something good with this money—money gleaned (at least in part) from the donations of little old ladies on limited incomes. It did catch my heart, however, when Graham began praising a President who has bragged “I am very greedy,” and “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy, ... "I’ve grabbed all the money I could get.”

Trump is a state leader, not a leader of a church. Hasn’t every Christian Trump fan repeated over and again, “We don’t need a Sunday School teacher; we need a President.” But watching Graham praise Trump’s character, even as Trump flaunted greed, has helped me realize how willing the modern church has been to abandon an aspect of leadership that God put in place because he was a wise and loving father.

If we fiercely defend the inerrancy of Genesis 1-2 but are comfortable reworking the “love of money” command, maybe we should ask ourselves which requires more of our daily lives. Which truth would cost us? Which truth would radically change the current dynamics of our Christian organizations?

As you look at the leadership teams presently driving your churches and mission organizations, do you see men who have clearly forfeited the love of money? Or do you see leaders from the community who can also check the “Christian” box—men who have a proven track record for fiscal success—elevated to positions of spiritual leadership? Is the trust of your organization embedded in the horses and chariots of men who are connected and successful, or do you see men who are committed above all lesser gods to the kingdom of God?

Because how we feel about money is so integral to our faith, the trajectory of your organization, in large part, depends on the answer to these questions.

“But we can’t judge other people’s hearts!” we cry. Actually, the Scripture clearly asks us to judge others in this way--asking us to find, identify, and evaluate greedy hearts, preventing them from taking leadership positions in the church.

Why would God ask us to do this? I think he knows what a love of money entails. A few aspects of this sort of idolatry are listed below.

1. The deformity of personal identity.

Most of us have something that tempts us to abandon our worth in Christ alone. We might be tall, smart, articulate, winsome, or gifted. Money isn’t the only threat here. But a love of money is particularly disorienting because most people respect wealth. Jesus told us that it would be harder for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for the rich man to inherent the Kingdom of God because he knew how difficult it would be for someone who had access to external validation to depend wholly and continually upon the sufficiency of the gospel. While it’s easy enough for most of us to agree cognitively with Christ’s substitutionary atonement, carrying that cerebral agreement into pragmatics of daily life is not just difficult--but impossible--for those who worship money.

2. The deformity of wealth-based biases.

This tendency is ugly, and especially in a culture of PC police, most groups of comfortable white people don’t like to admit that we have biases of any sort. However, those who love wealth almost always find it tempting to categorize and dismiss marginalized groups of people instead of respecting the imago Dei in humanity as a whole. This isn’t an issue of conforming to a liberal ideology--it’s a theological shortcoming. A wealthy man who makes a dismissive joke about Mexicans, women, or immigrants is defying God’s respect for all humans, substituting his own values of money instead.

3. The deformity of limited exposure.

This seems counter-intuitive, but there are certain aspects of wisdom that can only be gained from lower-income leaders. Until you’ve struggled financially for many years, you cannot understand fully what faith in Jesus means. Just like there is wisdom people only learn from suffering from intense health or relational problems, poverty is a classroom that brings a depth of insight and awareness that a high income can never produce.

And no, those few short years of young adulthood when everybody is dirt poor don’t count. Being twenty-two and living on mac-and-cheese in a ratty apartment is not the same as being forty-five and wondering how you are going to take care of your teenage children. There is zero equivocation there, and the fact that so many wealthy folks reference those early years as proof that they “understand” financial hardship is actually evidence that they don’t.

4. The deformity of vision.

Men who love money will gravitate toward solutions that promise financial security. When a vision statement is chosen, when staff hires are made, when policies are created or enforced, men who harbor a deep love of the dollar will naturally be divided in their loyalties. They will feel most comfortable with the path that makes the most sense financially—and they will interpret that comfort as guidance from the Holy Spirit. God knew this when he warned us about this sort of sin. He knew that we would sometimes miss his true calling because we would be wrapped up in trying to sanctify temporal values instead.

I think the body needs a mix of leadership. We need wealthy leaders who have learned to hold wealth loosely in faith because this is a mark of deep maturity, indeed. We also need poor leaders who have learned to walk in faith with little to no resources. We need the humility to listen to one another and to hold the commodities of eternity in their proper bearings.

We also need to remember that God was just as intentional about practical New Testament commands that shake up our present organizations as he was about the narratives of Genesis 1-2, the Ten Commandments, or any other element of the inerrant Word. We cannot claim to be committed to the Bible as a whole if we are unwilling to embrace its most pragmatic instruction.

I love this section of the book of James, and I find that I am often guilty of committing the offense named here. It’s a plumb line. It’s a lodestar. It’s a call to a sort of holiness that is not of this world.

“My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man.”

...” ... “But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. “

Our Two Levels of Suffering

1. MATERIAL SUFFERING

Deep suffering occurs at two levels. The first is sort of animalistic—material human encountering material threat. It's the biochemistry inside us, the process of hormone generation that allows our bodies and minds to respond to a stimulus.

When something (or someone) we love is endangered, our hearts pound with feelings of loss, dread, or sorrow. Our minds race through both the past and the future. We are filled with regret for what we might have done differently, and we are filled with dread, imagining the worst-case scenarios that may befall us. Here at the material level, we react. We cry out in agony. We react in anger. We eat too much or nothing at all. We sink into depression.

ANIMAL EMOTIONS IN ANIMALS
Scientists disagree about the emotions of non-human animals, debating quality and capacity for "feeling" and whether chemical changes in the body initiate or result from a stimulus (or both).  Higher-level, intelligent animals (like a golden retriever or an elephant) seem to be more conscious of the results of chemical changes—actively demonstrating signs of sorrow or joy, while lower-level animals (like a flinching sea anemone) seem to have more instinctive reactions to danger.

Some Christians disagree with me on this, but as a dog lover who has spent decades in very close company with her pets, I believe that at least at some level, intelligent creatures are capable of feeling.  (By the way, check out Numbers 22:27-30 if you want to see a Biblical example of an animal being allowed to express sorrow over injustice.)

ANIMAL EMOTIONS IN HOMO SAPIENS
Because humans are more intelligent than other beings, our material capacity for suffering is complex. We don’t just fight or flight, we process and strategize. We experience surges of hormones, and flutters of feeling, and waves of agony. We reflect and react in a thousand different ways.

2. SPIRITUAL SUFFERING

But there’s also a spiritual realm in which suffering occurs, and I don’t believe non-human animals are capable of this sort of pain. Spiritual pain requires the imago-Dei--a godlike capacity for metaphysical (beyond the physical) awareness. Of all the animals, humans alone were given this ability during the separation of Adam and Eve from the rest of creation.

THE UNIQUE PAIN HUMANS FEEL: THE UNIQUE COMPLAINTS HUMANS MAKE
No matter what you believe about the nature of the narrative given to us in Genesis 1 and 2—no matter what you believe about theistic or literal evolution—I think it’s evident that humans are the only animals capable of carrying suffering beyond the physical realm, all the way to the throne of God.  

Apart from Romans 8:19-22 (which describes the general frustration of creation, longing for the healing of earth), I can’t think of an instance in which an animal brings grief to the Almighty. The ability to enter the intimate, invisible realm--that burning room in which we take our pain back to God--seems to be distinctively human.

It’s fascinating to see how the Bible handles this ability. So many times, atheists depict a sort of mindless, robotic, Stepford-wife nature to prayer,  but that’s not at all what we see in God’s word. So many of God’s characters experienced intense moments of conflict in which they confronted their Creator openly man-to-God.

Abraham challenged the Lord with a rhetorical battle for Sodom, dealing him a brazen accusation, “Shall not the judge of the earth do right?” (Genesis 18). Did God instantly obliterate Abraham for his audacity? No. He made time and space for his argument, and he changed his own plans to fit Abraham’s request.

In Genesis 32, Jacob contended with the pre-incarnate Lord, wrestling with him all night long and insisting that he would not let Him go until he was blessed. The Lord gave a response so unusual here, I wouldn't believe it had happened, if God had not left it in the text word-for-word. He said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

Over and again in the Psalms, David wailed out to God in honest sorrow. He used fierce and terrible words, expressing feelings of abandonment, betrayal, and doubt. Often when he returned to praise, he was expressing the sort of hope and the trust that come after the confession of fear and disappointment. This is the raw, real prayer book God left for us to use during our own moments of sorrow.

In the New Testament, this pattern of honesty is repeated. In Matthew 15, a Canaanite woman refused to leave Jesus and his disciples alone until he healed her daughter. Even after Jesus discouraged her appeal, she persisted in wrestling against him--at which point he not only conceded to her request, but also praised her for her stubborn faith (26-28).

When Lazarus died in John 11, both Mary and Martha openly expressed their disappointment with Jesus. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” And Jesus was moved enough by their pain to weep with them before he raised Lazarus from the dead.

These honest, passionate, supernatural engagements with the creator are only found in Homo sapiens.  Even in non-Christian culture, the capacity to suffer metaphysically, crying out to a god of some sort is nearly universal.

THE INSUFFICIENCY OF MATERIAL ANSWERS FOR METAPHYSICAL QUESTIONS
Because humans have this dual capacity for pain, it’s insufficient to treat suffering at only the material level. If (as Christians) we medicate only our animal pain, there will be deep parts of our spirit that remain infected and broken.

The battles we must fight with God, the disappointment we must express to him, cannot be remedied by any other means.

But this is terrifying work because many of us have never been brave enough to identify what’s churning in this invisible part of our souls. We have tried to push those questions down and away. We have tried to patch them with self-control or with spiritual busyness. We have tried to maintain our Christian focus by the strength of our will, without ever admitting to the Living God why we are hurt or what’s broken in our trust.

In doing so, we are attempting to lie to God. We are like a child who withdraws, refusing to go to his parents to talk about his anger.  We are avoiding the real work we need to do the living God because we don’t truly trust him to love us or do us good.

We also know how dangerous he is. Every time I read Job 38 (one of my favorite chapters of the Bible), I am simultaneously thrilled and terrified because here God roars.

“Dress for action like a man;
    I will question you, and you make it known to me.

 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone,
when the morning stars sang together
    and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

 “Or who shut in the sea with doors
    when it burst out from the womb,
when I made clouds its garment
    and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed limits for it
    and set bars and doors,
and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
    and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

On and on the monologue goes, the holy bellowing of Papa-is-in-the-house. I’m stunned, breathless, humbled.

But though I am flattened, I’m flattened with a comfort that could never have come had Job not been honest about his appeal.  I need to be overcome by the glory and holiness of God, just as much as I need to tactile answers to the material problems I face.

The answer to Job’s question was God himself. Job needed to know that, and I do, too.

WHAT WAITS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF SPIRITUAL HONESTY
A living God doesn’t work like a religious formula or equation. As Lewis wrote, "'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”

This King might heal a child, or he might not. He might wrestle with you all night, bless you with a new name, and leave you with a limp. He might give your cause a second chance, or  sit and weep with you, or raise something you love from the dead. He might roar and say, “I am all the answer you need.”

I don't know. That's why I'm scared to go there. That's why I am way more comfortable with my primal, animal responses to suffering.

It’s hard to have the faith to enter into honest, necessary wrestling matches with my Father. I'm ashamed of the questions I need to ask him. I’m also not sure that I will like his answers.

I’d rather hide behind a bunch of spiritual fig leaves than stand before him and say, “You have known all along how weak I am! Why didn’t you come sooner? Now my world is broken and dead, and I was depending on you, and you didn’t come.”

But only when I’m willing to confess the real questions deep inside me can I exercise the unique capacity God has given me to interact with him. He's knows what's churning there anyway. He wants me to carry it to him instead of shielding my suffering with business, anger, and mistrust. He's strong enough to handle all of me.

This is some of the work I’m doing today in my prayer life. I could use your prayers for courage as I take these steps.

Cognitively, I know that God is good. I could give you systematic, theological arguments explaining the necessary presence of evil in the world as well as the exegetical mathematics of the justice of salvation. But these days, I am needing more than rational or empirical proofs because I'm more than a body attached to a mind. My invisible soul needs to encounter the resources of God at a level deeper than the mental gymnastics of an intelligent animal. I need to run deep, deep into the presence of my Father.

Know that I'm also praying for you. So often it seems like God carries me into private pain that resonates with what's happening inside my readers, and I can't help but think that this bond is intentional.  That modern readers (like you) would wade through 2,000-word posts in a world of bullet points and platitudes is astonishing to me. I don't take your camaraderie lightly.

A friend of mine (who has walked through similar pain) said to me last night, "I'll go to battle with you," and I didn't realize how much I needed that companionship until I heard the promise. So I'm extending the same offer to you. Here's where I am today. Take my hand; let's pray and walk together .

The Vast Difference between What We THINK and What We LOVE

Because I had only watched the Les Mis stage play and movies, my heart wasn’t prepared for a brutal plot twist included in Victor Hugo’s novel.

In fact, when I hit this section of the book, I was so devastated, I had to walk away from reading for several weeks. It was too painful to bear the images Hugo was asking me to carry.

In the book (as in the play/movies), Marius is an idealistic young man who embraces the democratic ideals of the French Republic. He rejects the Royalism of his wealthy grandfather to follow in the steps of his dead father, and he embraces severe poverty to study with a group of young rebels. Marius nearly dies in a street battle, but Jean ValJean rescues then carries him through a hellish labyrinth of Parisian sewers.

This rescue isn’t easy for ValJean. He hates Marius, resenting the threat romance presents to the happy home he’s created with his adopted daughter. Yet ValJean ultimately chooses the happiness of Cossette above his own, saving Marius’s life and providing for the marriage of the couple.

After the marriage, however, ValJean realizes that he must tell Marius the truth of his past. He confesses his life as a former convict.

Despite the young man’s democratic ideals, despite his compassion for the desperate, Marius slips immediately back into the prejudices of the upper class. He shuns the man who has saved his life and happiness, trying to force him out of Cossette’s life. The pain ValJean suffers as a result leads to his death.

THE ARCHETYPE OF THE YOUNG IDEALIST

While reading this part of Les Mis, I was reminded of Angel Clare’s behavior in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Angel is a similar young man of high ideals, intent on defying the aristocracy and all of its silly conventions. When push comes to shove, however, Angel embraces the defaults of his privileged culture. He demeans Tess for a rape that wasn’t her fault, rejects her, and allows her to endure abuse and suffering that eventually kill her.

Reading both stories, my stomach churns with a grief particular to injustice. If these young men had been monsters throughout the book, the pain wouldn’t be so bad. However, there is a unique horror in discovering that a character who seems to believe what is right and true doesn’t actually live by those same principles.

THE INTUITIVE BACKBONE OF OUR ALLEGIANCE

Hardy and Hugo were so wise to show us this aspect of human nature. They knew that what we THINK doesn’t always indicate what we truly LOVE.

As writers like James K.A. Smith and Jonathan Haidt have revealed, most of our allegiances are formed intuitively, not rationally. Haidt writes, “don’t take people’s moral arguments at face value. They’re mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.”  This is why members of all political parties are willing to overlook flagrant facts and cling desperately to what they want to be true. “Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second” (Haidt xx).

We see this tendency in Marius and Angel. Both men had processed truth cognitively, but neither was prepared for the mess of human reality intersecting with their ideals.  They didn't realize how the pressures of real life would divide their thoughts from their loves.

Like all of us, these young men made the mistake of oversimplification. They did this because sweeping generalizations may be true, but they are also terrifically easy.

The statement, “People should care for the poor,” will always be easier than, “I will invest long-term in one desperate person.”

“Women shouldn't have abortions,” will always be easier than, “I will be a foster parent until this young addict is recovered enough to parent her baby.”

“All men have sinned, and we should pray for our leaders,” will always feel truer when a politician we value is holding the office.

“God will provide,” is nice to say, and we might think we believe it is true, but until we are forced to release things that we hold most dear, we cannot have operational, love-based, living faith in that statement.

THE DIVINE GIFT OF TIME

Lately I’ve been wondering why a God who exists outside of time would bother to include this dimension in his physical creation. An omnipotent being knows what’s going to happen. It’s not like he needs a chronological limitation—a thousand years are like a day for him.

Surely, though, time accomplishes something powerful in us. Time allows us to think about what we believe—then it allows us to test those ideas out in reality. It allows us to identify the gap between our intellect and our deep allegiance. It forces us to carry the weaknesses we find back to the Father and dig into his resources.

Yesterday I listened to Tim Keller’s sermon, “Your Plans: God’s Plans,” and Keller affirms this principle in the life of Joseph. God didn't wrap up injustice, betrayal, need, and redemption in a 30-minute Touched by an Angel segment. He let time do hard work in Joseph and his family. He let long-term suffering bring about realizations that can’t be sped up.

In Greek drama, the word, “anagnorisis” refers to a moment in which a character recognizes his or her true character. Time in pain provides this this same gift to us off stage—it helps us come to the “aha!”--the awakening. Time is the vehicle that allows us to truly confess, “I knew truth, but I didn’t internalize it like I thought I did. Help my unbelief.”

This is the sort of breaking point Peter found during his denial of Jesus. The Savior he had sworn to follow, he abandoned. Had Peter not been given time to see his unbelief, he could never have known his ultimate need.

Likewise, in my own life, there are many Biblical truths I would have said I believed ten or twenty years ago. But not until God used the dimensions of time and pain did I find out that these convictions were only intellectual assent and not any sort of reality inside me.  Like Marius or Angel Clare, I am (still) being deconstructed by suffering, forced to realize that I have been infected by oversimplifications and religious platitudes, distracted by the biases and allegiances of my culture.

PENITENCE FOR THE THINKER OF GOOD THOUGHTS

Thankfully, Hugo shows us a repentant Marius at the end of Les Mis. The young man sees the full scope of his foolishness, and he is crushed before ValJean with a holy sorrow. Marius then lets the truth change him. He sees what he thought he was, then he admits who has been in reality.

Such confession is hard and frightening work--like the peeling of Eustace’s dragon skins in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. But this is vital penitence, something evangelical Christianity should embrace—of all times—especially now. Especially now when the gospel is being corrupted by political distortions--especially now when Christian leaders are allowing the love of power and the love of wealth to distort the eternal good news--now is the best of all times for God’s people to take up serious individual and corporate confession. Now is the best of times for the church to kneel beside the feet of the Savior who carried us through a hellish sewer to save our souls, the best of times to whisper, “We thought we knew what was right, but we have never let Truth sink into our deepest loves.”

This process is going to feel very naked, and we will want to reach for fig leaves. The zeitgeist is swollen with dismissive, arrogant postures, and modern Christians aren’t accustomed to feeling vulnerable in any way.

We like being dominant, not humble. We like being certain, not sorry. We like showing others how they need to repent, not repenting of our own failures.

But Truth personified sees us so clearly. We can hide nothing from him. We may sulk like the hard-working older brother standing grumpily in the field of his own labor,  but the Father who loves us knows we need resources and weapons that can’t be formed by human reason or effort. He knows when we've missed the point of sonship.

This Father stands waiting to revive the thinker of right thoughts--the spewer of proper apologetics--the knower of everything but nothing at all--by imparting true belief. He stands ready to break down Peter the Denier-Who-Didn't-Actually-Believe-What-He-Thought so that he can come to him gently, commissioning him in the midst of his penitence with the divine ability to feed God's sheep.

Finding the Seed of "I Want to Kill."

When my dad was a boy, he and his friends would leave their shotguns and rifles on the school bus in the mornings so that the bus driver could drop students off to go hunting in the woods after school.

When I was a kid, student parking lots were full of pickup trucks with rifle racks in the back windows.

These weren't semi-automatic weapons, of course; but they were weapons capable of killing human beings.

The world felt different back then.

Yeah, there were isolated incidents. Two years after I was born, an honors student shot eleven people and killed three in a school in New York. When I was four, a student shot four in Missouri. Twelve were injured in '84. Seventy-four were injured in Wyoming in '86. Between, before, and after these incidents, there were dark stories long and complicated--horrors which unraveled in time pre-web, years when Florida felt far away.

But now we have an Internet that allows us to see it all real time, making the worst of human nature a "thing." The celebrity of mass murder has become a potential high to the social outlier. It's an identity. It's an opportunity to become legendary.

Last night my daughter kept saying, "Students want to kill students now, Mom. It's not just about weaponry; there's something really wrong with people. There's something wrong down in their hearts."

And she's right. Though a thousand oversimplified flame wars rage across Facebook, driven by fallacies and recalibrated semi-facts--though a thousand micro-attacks diffuse the adrenaline and cortisol we rightly feel in a world gone all wrong, linear answers like "Arm the teachers!" and "Destroy the guns!" are two sides of the same coin, really--two variants on the core lament of all our hearts, which is "MAKE. THIS. STOP."

I want some magic wand, some spell to whisper, some "Bibbity-Bobbety-Boo" to make this nightmare end. But I live in a culture where people want to kill people, and when people want to kill, they will find a way to do it.

Teenagers especially. Teenagers always find a way to do what they want to do.

Teenagers find a way to have sex when they are grounded.

They find a way to drink when they are underage.

They find a way to sneak out of their rooms and into strip clubs.

They find a way to smoke pot when it's illegal.

They drive too fast.

They make fake ID's.

They hack into databases, and grade banks, and government websites.

The defiant teenage spirit cannot be bridled; it is liquid, and hot, and amphibious.

This means that teenagers who want to kill a lot of people will find a way to kill a lot of people.

Teenagers who want to kill people will make crockpot bombs. They will poison cafeteria food. They will stick other kids with syringes. They will plow cars through crowds in school parking lots.

A gun may be the easiest (and most glamorous) way to kill people for now; but teenagers who morph from skinny, low-rise jeans to baggy, high-waisted jeans in a matter of weeks--teenagers who live adapting constantly--teenagers who want the glory of being mass murderers will find a way to become mass murderers.

When the gun door shuts, they will crawl through a window.

Our present situation isn't equivalent to Australia's Port Arthur massacre. No, we are in deeper trouble than this. We live in a nation in which "teenage killer" has become an identity.

This means the threat is far more dire than most of us realize. For no matter what we do about guns and schools (and something does need to be done about guns and schools)--we will still have a fundamental problem after the best of all possible legislative decisions has been made.

We will still have children who want to kill children.

Like the second wave of danger in a horror movie, like the killer who resurrects after we all know for sure that he's dead, like the scream after the scream, even the noblest and wisest legislative efforts will ultimately prove insufficient here.

This is why America's youth need us.

No matter what you believe about guns, America's youth need us.

I'm not going to talk about my theories on this blood-thirsty zeitgeist--theories about what happens to the deep psychology of a country when the sanctity of life is diminished en masse, corralled into political camps and leveraged so that human hearts break only selectively over the desperation of immigrants or unborn children.

This isn't the time to dig into those theories. Not yet. But it is time to talk about how we must invest in the children of our local communities.

Like lazy parents handing a kid an iPad and disengaging, we cannot expect a law to do what only human contact can accomplish.

Where there is young pain, we must engage.

Where there is young loneliness, we must engage.

Where there are children consumed by horror and abuse, we must seek out those deep cancers and help the vulnerable fight emotional disease before it becomes lethal.

We have to find the seed of, "I want to kill," and realize that it means, "I want to die," because it was once, "I am not seen," or "I am alone," or "I have no hope."

Work for guns. Work against guns. Do good, hard research and fight for those laws you believe will do the most good.

But however you work with legislation, make it a bigger priority still to work with real, live kids. Because all around us, young people are trying to grow up in a world going to hell. Those kids need us desperately, and they need us even more than they need our arguments.

Escaping from a Manipulator (Genesis 31)

Any survivor of an emotionally-manipulative relationship should identify with Genesis 31. It’s crazy how many techniques of narcissistic, abusive people are found in this one story.  

Jacob the Deceiver has met his match in Laban, an opportunistic father-in-law who takes advantage of Jacob’s every weakness. I’m going to list several elements of Laban’s narcissistic abuse below.

If you’ve made it out of a relationship with someone like Laban, you’ll remember what it feels like to be in this sort of situation. You’ll also see how God sees what Jacob has endured and helps him escape it.

Even though Jacob hasn’t been perfect in his own choices, God helps him find a new life post trauma. That’s encouraging to me as someone who has lived a broken life. He’s in the business of redemption. We can trust him to lead us out of emotional chaos.

GAS LIGHTING occurs when an abuser attempts to control a situation by challenging your perceptions. He uses rhetorical force to reorient your understanding by superimposing his views on your memories. Over and again, a gaslighter will contradict your complaints with, “It didn’t actually happen like this...here is the REAL situation.” Over time, this erodes your trust in your own observations.

“Then Laban answered and said to Jacob, ‘The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine.’”  31:43a).

No, Laban. They aren’t yours. Jacob worked for them.

PROJECTION occurs when an abuser is unwilling to admit is own failures, instead projecting all blame on his victim. For example, when a sexual abuser claims that a woman seduced him instead of owning his choices, he is projecting or blame shifting.

“Now Jacob heard that the sons of Laban were saying, ‘Jacob has taken all that was our father's, and from what was our father's he has gained all this wealth.’ And Jacob saw that Laban did not regard him with favor as before.”

Though Jacob has been upright, helping grow Laban’s business, Jacob is still blamed for Laban’s inability to meet his own goals.

CASTING YOUR STRENGTHS AS WEAKNESSES. Because your gifts are a natural threat to a narcissist, he attempts to recast them in a negative light, causing you to feel shame and hesitation.

“These twenty years I have been with you. Your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, and I have not eaten the rams of your flocks. What was torn by wild beasts I did not bring to you. I bore the loss of it myself. From my hand you required it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. There I was: by day the heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes. These twenty years I have been in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times.” (31:38-41)

Though Jacob had been a faithful and productive partner, Laban accused Jacob of being damaging and selfish instead of helpful.

MOVING THE GOAL POSTS: Demanding more an more from someone after he or she has met your initial requests.

“You know that I have served your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me.” (31:6,7)

Laban didn't just switch Leah for Rachel. Over and again, he used his position of power to shift his demands of Jacob. It’s impossible to please someone like that. It’s a game the abused can never, ever win.

THREATS: Subtle or overt claims that an abuser could hurt you, if he wanted to.
“It is in my power to do you harm. But the God of your father spoke to me last night, saying, ‘Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.’ “ (31:29)

Laban feels the need to flex before Jacob. “I could hurt you if I wanted to.” It’s ugly and ridiculous because he’s posturing before a man God has promised to bless and protect.

FALSE GENEROSITY and HOOVERING: Pretending to be benevolent. Promising to change after the abused has left.

“Why did you flee secretly and trick me, and did not tell me, so that I might have sent you away with mirth and songs, with tambourine and lyre? “ (31:27)

“The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine. But what can I do this day for these my daughters or for their children whom they have borne? (31:43b)

Laban is pretending to be what he is not—a kind and loving father-in-law. This attempts to create shame and dependency in Jacob, as well as allegiance that he does not owe.

In the New Testament, we find a Christ who embodies the Truth. Jesus is the living standard for veracity, Facts Incarnate. Because of this, he is able to judge us (and those who oppress us) perfectly. Because of this, he is able to see and heal us. It’s so important to run to him when a manipulator is attempting to lead our lives because he can see through the rhetorical fog and divide light from darkness. He can tell us who we truly are and explain our calling with utter clarity, though the noise and accusations of the world threaten to sink our hearts.

Notice how God sees straight through all of Laban’s posturing. He states: “for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you.  I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me. Now arise, go out from this land and return to the land of your kindred.’” (31: 12b,13.) He’s ready to lift Jacob out of this trap and put him in a place where he can grow. This same voice can lead you home as well.


 

When God is Slow (Psalm 9)

Sometimes the Lord loves us enough to work slowly.

In the physical world, he will occasionally create material age in an instant—transforming water to wine or void to earth in a period of seconds or days.

But spiritual growth is rarely rushed. For this work of creation, he employs the tool of time. We can’t understand it. We fight against it. We beg him to hurry.

Yet by his slow and intentional hand, we are transformed.

I thought of this while reading Psalm 9 today, and particularly at verse 18.

For the needy shall not always be forgotten,
    and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.

It is difficult to follow the guidance of the first part of this Psalm when we feel forgotten, but there a unique beauty to trusting God in the slowest of times, when it seems that the ache will never end. Reading the Scriptures, we find old stories of gradual, deliberate work in his followers--work accomplished over years and years of difficulty. To "recount his wonderful deeds" doesn't just take his cosmic blasts of intervention into account, but also the meticulous labor of an artist willing to take time to perfect what he has begun.

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart;
    I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
    I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

We choose thanks because we are tempted to despair. We tell ourselves the old stories because it's difficult to see the big picture while crouching in a foxhole. We testify to the eternal end He has begun for us when we declare against the darkness:

The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed,
    a stronghold in times of trouble.
And those who know your name put their trust in you,
    for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.
 

Beowulf and Jacob (Genesis 29-31)

For the past few weeks, I’ve been teaching through Beowulf. While I’ve always liked the story, Seamus Heaney’s translation and audio reading have won my heart. I see now why Tolkien was enthralled by this old story.

When I was twenty and reading Beowulf, I was caught up in the epic heroism of this tale--the superhuman strength and the glory of slain monsters. But as an older reader, I am moved by flashes of vulnerability and honesty in the protagonist. It feels so human to me, and I’ve been brought to tears in strange plot moments that I don’t even remember from twenty-five years ago.

The scene in which Beowulf and Hrothgar bid one another farewell. The gravity of Beowulf’s attempt to fight a dragon, even in his old age. A life spent in defense of others. The sorrow of having no heir.

As a Christian, one of the most interesting aspects of this tale is the mix of pagan and orthodox beliefs. We see superstition and allegiance to darkness intermingled with trust in the Almighty. Neither the narrator nor the people (Danes nor Geats) are seem quite able to process how faith in Jesus is supposed to impact the struggles and battles of daily life.

In the intersection of Christianity and 1000 AD Anglo-Saxon paganism, people weren’t sure what God did and what he didn’t. So, they relied on a strange mix of the values of the old way and whatever it is a living God might do for them.

I see a similar struggle in Genesis 30, where Jacob attempts to separated his goods from Laban’s. These two tricksters are going head-to-head, Jacob, the wiley blessing-birthright stealer and Laban, the wife-swapper. They deserve each other, I suppose, and somehow it’s satisfying to watch them take a dose of their own medicines.

Jacob doesn’t seem to realize that God doesn’t need his tricks, so in this pre-Mendelian world, he attempts to use stripped sticks to influence the birth of speckled sheep. We look at that and sort of laugh because if he is the chosen of God, what could a little superstition do to top off the blessings ordained by heaven?

Yet if we look closely to Jacob’s life (and Beowulf’s life), we might find a mirror of sorts. How often do we hold our breath and try to finagle the blessings of  God, begging and maneuvering for abundance that he has already ordained? Instead of resting in his resources and love, we see God as a hard-dealing businessman, for whom we must perform.

Like Beowulf, we stand still at the intersection of a works-driven culture, unable to realize the comprehensive impact of the sacrifice of a Christ who IS our righteousness in full. The work is over. He has done it all. Our identity is secure. The power is ours. The rising action is complete, the climax has been reached, we live in the denouement. The great change has been accomplished.

Rain on a Barren Land (Genesis 25-28, Psalm 8)

"Drought and Downpour" by Mayard Dixon, 1944

This week was kind of crazy for our family. We took our adopted son to the gastroenterologist and learned a little bit more about his past as well as some medical needs he may be facing in the future. M was born with gastroschisis, a condition in which the intestines were present outside of the body. I won’t expand more on that here, but I will say that it’s been sort of an emotional week with a few sweet discoveries and also some hard possibilities.

If you’re keeping up with our reading, yesterday we read Genesis 25-28 and Psalm 8. Briefly, I want to make sure you think about the theme of barrenness that began with Sarah. We find out that Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, is barren in Genesis 25, and as God heals her from this, she conceives twins who struggle hard in the womb—Jacob and Esau. Later, we will read about the physical barrenness of Jacob’s loved wife Rachel and the barrenness of affection his wife Leah faces.

Isaac also faces a famine which drives him back to Abimelech (remember the second king Abraham who took Sarah because Abraham claimed she was his sister?) Isaac makes the same mistake, and it’s a king of the Philistines—not the chosen people of God—who makes the moral call here.

Then we see the impulsiveness of Esau, the duplicity of Rebekah and Jacob, the conflict that rises among broken people trying to figure out the intersection between the blessings of God and the activity of men. It’s kind of a mess—barren people in barren lands making mistakes.

By the time I got to the Psalm 8 section of the reading, I was moved by these lines, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet...”

This psalm rings a lot truer to my own experience than some of the psalms that claim a human righteousness that deserves rescue. I can’t identify with feeling like i deserve God’s help. I know how messed up I am and how barren my moral ability actually is.

But when I read David’s stunned gratitude that God would bother with us at all, I feel some of his same questions fall naturally upon my soul. Who are we that you would trust us like you do?

His love is extravagant favor. Rain on a barren land. A child in a barren womb.

The LaLeche League division of the AARP (Genesis 21)

“And Sarah said, ‘God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.’ And she said, ‘Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.’ And the child grew and was weaned.”

Genesis 21:6-8

When I was in my thirties, I didn’t understand all the wrinkle cream ads. I thought older women were beautiful--that the lines on their faces made them interesting. But as I’ve grown into my mid forties, I’ve realized that there’s more to aging than charming little crow’s feet around my eyes. The skin around my mouth is changing, growing heavy, and often my expression looks tired or angry when I’m not.

It can be a little distressing to look in a mirror and see a reflection that doesn’t show my true heart. The stress of the past few years is visible in my countenance.

Yesterday I bought my first pair of reading glasses. They were just 1.0 in strength, the lowest possible lenses. But still, there was something about that purchase which marked a definite transition.

A couple of older folks watched me trying them on in the grocery, trying to read the back of a Pepto bottle (the closest label I could find), and they chuckled. Clearly, I was new at this. One kind older man reached out and told me he remembered his first pair of reading glasses, and he told me a couple of those medical stories you often hear grey-heads telling a little too loudly in public.

It was an initiation. I was in the club now. He was showing me how to laugh at my body as it ages, modeling the humor that maximizes the latter years.

The jokes older people tell aren’t always what young people would consider “nice.” Jokes about the bathroom. Jokes about the bedroom. Jokes about colonoscopies. Jokes about parts of your body withering away and yielding to gravity. Yet the sort of bodily humor that hits in the second half of life isn’t sexual so much as confessional—there's usually an “all is vanity” punch line reminiscent of Ecclesiastes.

That’s the sort of punch line feel when I read Sarah’s statement, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?”

I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen a medical diagram of the breasts of a 99-year-old woman, but if you have, you’ll understand why nursing a child wouldn’t be the first possibility that comes to mind. Yet these dry and fallen breasts would fill up with milk, filling the belly of an impossible promised child until he is weaned.

It's the sort of story that would make a couple of old folks chuckle in the reading glasses aisle of the grocery. “Did you hear about old Sarah?”

Yes, we’ll give that image a laugh—and for just a moment or two, we will let the levity of the presence of a comedic God fill us with hope that such a winsome Lord might also revive our own dry and cranky bones for the work of another day.

I do believe. I don't. I do. I don't. (Genesis 19-20)

The Bible is painfully honest about human nature. That’s what we get in Genesis 19-20--close ups that show us just how messed up Abraham and Lot actually were.

Lot is no longer living near Sodom (Genesis 13:12). He’s moved inward through the gates of Sodom (Genesis 19:1) and is now living in the inner city. When you and I hear the words “Sodom and Gomorrah,” we think darkness, fire, and destruction, but surely it was a beautiful, wealthy, comfortable city by day. Why else would Lot have hesitated to leave? Why else would he complain at the prospect of taking refuge in the mountains--even as he is being rescued?

Lot had spent years caravanning in the wilderness. He could handle the mountains. But instead of being grateful for God’s miraculous and merciful intervention, Lot has grown picky, begging for a small town in which to live. He says he will die without that convenience. (No, Lot. You’ll die if you stay in Sodom. Years of moral compromise have made him dense.)

By night, Sodom shows us the telos (the end) of humanism—greed that demands whatever it desires. In unison, the men of this wicked city convene to demand homosexual rape of two heavenly visitors. Lot defaults to compromise, offering his own two daughters for the rape fest instead.

Imagine what it’s like to be one of these two young women, hearing the crowds rage outside, then hearing your own father offer you to a riot. These women have grown up in a godless town with a self-indulgent and spineless father, as well as a mother who doesn’t fear God’s commands (Genesis 19:26). Is it any wonder that these girls (who I seriously doubt were virgins, BTW, Genesis 19:8) eventually get their own dad drunk and impregnate themselves by them?

But Lot’s family isn’t the only one that’s messed up. We also see Abraham stumble in fear. In fact, he makes the same exact mistake that he made in Egypt, worried that King Abimelek is going to be overwhelmed by his gorgeous wife, Sarah, so he plays the “sister” card again. We thought he’d learned better by now, right? Big fat backslide.

Don’t forget that she’s at least 90 at this point and post-menopausal (Genesis 18). In my mind’s eye, I’m seeing this little old couple wobbling into Gerar--a white-haired man who still believes the wife of his youth is a total catch...

Also, don’t forget that God has been talking with Abraham directly, providing stunning evidence that Abraham won’t die until he’s produced an heir with Sarah. He’s one of very few humans who has ever had a guarantee that he won’t die—and yet, Abraham blanks on all that, trying to take charge of his own protection and trading away the very woman who is an essential part of God’s promise.

I wish I could know what Sarah felt here. Is she angry about his passivity or was she old enough at this point that she shook her head like a little old woman who is resigned (at last) to the fact that her husband is never going to shut the toilet seat? Is she giggling to herself that she’s now 90, married to a husband who is still convinced that she’s a major hottie? (<<That would be me. “You just go ahead and worry about that, honey. BTW, somebody bring me some Aspercreme.”)

Abimelek receives Sarah but doesn’t sleep with her, which is actually pretty important because the whole line of Abraham could have been threatened by Abraham’s lack of faith here.

It’s all kind of funny, and pretty dark, and also achingly sad. Here we have the crème of the crop, the best of the people of God. Abraham was willing to be circumcised as a grown man (which would have been excruciating and bloody), so he’s already banked on God to an extreme that I’ve never had to attempt.  Still, he believes like a sputtering candle, all in, sometimes out, threatened by the winds.

God is so patient and so proactive here, as he was with Lot. Over and again, we see a God who rescues men against their belief and trust, and even against their own desires. Yet he doesn't dominate them fully. After making extreme attempts to save Lot's family, God eventually allows Lot's wife to chase what she loved more than God.

When does God intervene, and when does he let us find our own end? This image is complex, just like modern theological attempts to reconcile free will and predestination.

God lets this story stand instead of reducing it to a single axiom, but by it we are at least shown this much: key figures in the narrative of the Old Testament are human beings with emotional and spiritual traits very much like our own. These are real people who sometimes got it right and often got it wrong, humans who could eke out a mustard seed’s worth of faith now and then—but who stumbled, too.

God is used to dealing with our type. He's loved us despite us for thousands of years, knowing us well enough to realize that even for those who love God most fiercely, even for those who commit most radically, our only hope could be a Savior stronger than any promise we ever make.
 

QWERTY vs. The Art of the Fika

READING/LISTENING: Genesis 16-18, Psalm 5, "The Covenants" video

So yesterday we began reading Genesis 16-18 and Psalm 5. I'm keeping today's post short to leave you room for that reading but also because I'd like for you to watch The Bible Project video "The Covenants" (https://thebibleproject.com/videos/covenants/) and read this beautiful essay by Dr. Russell Moore on the the irreducibility of Biblical narrative. https://www.russellmoore.com/2018/01/17/you-cant-have-ethics-without-stories/

It's rare for a contemporary article to move me as much as Dr. Moore's did, but so much of what has frustrated me about pop-evangelical treatment of the Scripture is addressed in this essay. He writes:

"Most of us who are conservative evangelicals rightly reject the idea that the history of the Bible is merely illustrative–stories not grounded in fact but that point to the “real issue” of some experience with God or some demonstration of the way to live. The problem is though that sometimes we use the Bible the same way, only with the understanding that these stories really happened in space and in time. That’s true, they did in fact happen, but we sometimes assume that the narrative is simply the way God is feeding us the abstractions of moral principles or doctrinal axioms."

I don't know if you remember the QWERTY section of the Veggie Tales videos, but the little jingle went like this:

"And so what we have learned applies to our lives today,
and God has a lot to say in His book.
You see, we know that God's word is for everyone
And now that our song is done, we'll take a look!"
 

I get why Veggie Tales did this. It's a standard teaching technique for elementary-aged kids. But when reading mass-produced Christian books, you'll often find a QWERTY section at the end of a well-formed adult narrative--a few sentences in which a writer includes a forthright moral or axiom to complete a powerful story. Sometimes this works. Other times, it feels forced and cheesy, as if the writer doesn't trust the reader to engage with the story.

So I was deeply relieved, both as a reader and as a writer, that Dr. Moore is addressing the problem of narrative reduction. It's something the Christian community needs to consider.

My oldest son just returned from six months in Sweden, and one of his favorite Scandinavian traditions is called fika, a mid-day coffee in which friends and co-workers put the to-do list aside and sit down together to catch up. Workers who skip fika to be "productive" aren't admired; they are seen as selfish. Swedes realize that taking time to listen, and to really listen, is valuable.

Swedish conversation tends to be more focused, and Swedes are comfortable with longer periods of silence between sentences. They take time to think before responding, not desperate to fill up all the room, but respecting concepts enough to let them sink in and roll around.

When you are reading the Bible, perhaps the concept of fika can free you up to encounter the narrative in a much deeper way. Instead of rushing, you can linger. Instead of checking off boxes and driving to QWERTified conclusions, you can slow down and absorb a story as a whole. And God can meet you there--not in just in bullet points or axioms--but complex and holy as mysterious as living beings always are.
 

A Long Road Trip with an Angry Woman (Genesis 11-15, Psalm 4)

Old man Terah got an itchin’ to leave home, so he packed up his son Abram and his grandson Lot (and all their people) and headed out of town. Every time I read this passage, I see the opening theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies, Terah’s little wife sitting in a rocking chair, strapped to the top of a camel, and teenaged Lot all wide-eyed, carrying a rifle and looking for adventure.

The clan had a plan to make it to Canaan, but they only got to a little town called Harran, and that was far enough for the old man’s bones. So he settled down a while to rest, which turned into the rest of his life.

I don’t know what drove the old man that far, and the Bible doesn’t say. But it does tell us that somewhere along that journey God spoke directly to Abram and told him to finish the trip. In fact, God tells Abram to stop settling into whatever had become comfortable, to go out from his country, away from his people, and away from even his father’s household into a land God would show him. The purpose of this land was very specific—Abram was to launch a nation that would bless all the people of the earth.

Critics of the Old Testament tend to rail on Israel for committing genocide, and they don’t care much for a God who operated by choosing a favorite nation. These critics also miss the deeper context of these passages. Fast forwarding to Genesis 15, we see a prophesy about Israel being stuck a while in a foreign land because the “iniquity [sin] of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

“Complete” is a strange word for sin, isn’t it? In Hebrew, it means “full” or “perfect.” I think this shows us how God’s mercy will sometimes allow human rebellion to grow into its own telos (or end). In yesterday’s passages about the Tree of Life and Babel, God intervened to thwart human rebellion—but here, God allows evil to run its natural course—ripening into full defiance against the creator.

So on those occasions when the nation of Israel steps into the Middle East as a militant, conquering kingdom, it’s functioning within the script of God’s perfect timing. Any nation that faces God’s justice (meted out by Israel) has reached its final moral tipping point—additional time or opportunity to live uprightly will do that nation no good.

I’m reminded of C.S. Lewis’s description of a hell-bound soul here, the man to whom God says, “Not my will but thine.” For such a soul, another day on earth would not lead to a desire for greater union with God. The fullness of rejection has been completed, and God at last permits a man’s will to chase his own sovereignty into the darkness.

Contrasted against such a posture, we see Abram, an imperfect man who slowly learns to trust a invisible God for a future he will never see in full.  God tells him to go somewhere he’s never been for the sake of people he can’t even imagine. He is promised children, though his wife is barren, and it’s all sort of comic and ridiculous. Here's the sort of story Christian rationalists and empiricists couldn’t begin to explain away in  a debate with Bill Nye.

But all this mystery heads toward one big purpose--God's intent to bless the world. So the covenant is not about elitism; it’s about the beginning of a holy movement that’s eventually going to undo all the damage Adam and Eve brought to this broken planet.

God’s ways are quirky, though--Abram is actually kind of ridiculous in the beginning. Sure, this man would eventually trust God deeply enough to offer him an only son, but he isn’t any kind of hero in his early years. In fact, he bails on his wife, abandoning her to a foreign king.

I’ve been married long enough to know what kind of lecture that poor dude was likely to face after this whole mess was straightened out.  If you've ever been trapped in a car with an angry woman, just imagine miles and miles on the road with angry Sarai. She was cynical sort, anyway—we get that from the whole tent/laughter debacle. And by how she treated Hagar, we know she could be cold as ice when she felt threatened.

Abram had to travel all the way from Egypt to Canaan with this woman after betraying her. “You just HANDED ME OVER like a PIECE OF MEAT!” Did he hear that a thousand times? I hope so.

If you wonder why Abraham grew so much spiritually between Harran and Caanan, you need to get to know the fury of a scorned female a little bit better. Makes me laugh every time. God works in mysterious ways, and we've got some serious sanctification going on here, folks.

By the time Abram rescues Lot from the King Kedorlaomer (et al.), he’s grown. Abram refuses the spoils of war saying that he’s not willing to risk belittling God by making alliances with an earthly ruler who could someday make a claim on Abram’s success. Abram wanted to offer that sort of allegiance only to God. (Some of our modern religious leaders could learn a lot here, right?)

Soon after he makes this leap, God speaks to Abram in a vision saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” Don't miss the contrast here. As Abram turned down the protection and wealth of the stuff of earth, God said that he was going to offer his own presence and resources instead. Abraham has chosen the Living Lord himself, and God's going to make good on that decision.

I wish I had time to write through the next few chapters. They are so beautiful and so ruggedly honest. God presents his covenant with visual symbols that would take our breath away, if we could see them with our own eyes. Then Abram fumbles in his faith again as the glory settles and as silence rises. (Don’t we all?) I see myself in these chapters. I cheer for Abram. I cringe for him. He is all of us, isn’t he?

How fitting that this section of the story hits in our reading alongside Psalm 4, one of my favorite Psalms in the Bible because it’s just so raw. David pours out his feelings. He appeals. He tries to cling to the truth. He collapses in surrender. He rests.

http://www.thistleandtoad.com/wwwthistleandtoadcom/writings/2018/1/17/a-long-road-trip-with-an-angry-woman-genesis-11-15-psalm-4

"We can do anythiiiiiiiiing." But should we? Genesis 11:6-7

Genesis 11:6-7

“And the Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.’” 

Every time I run into these verses, I flinch a little. At first glance, they feel almost mean. What’s wrong with people understanding one another? What’s wrong with “nothing being impossible” for humans? (Imagine a 1980’s theme song, here. “We can do anythiiiiiiing.”)

Even more baffling? God gave humans a command to create and cultivate. So what’s the deal? Why would he tell humans to do something, then stop them mid stream?

This story jolts me like Genesis 3:22-24. Remember this section we read a few weeks ago?

"Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”' therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life."

What’s wrong with knowing good and evil? What’s wrong with living forever? Wouldn't that be a good thing?

I think these sorts of passages are sort of enthymematic—they leave out an implied major premise that must be understood to get the full meaning. And in both cases, the omitted premise is pretty much the same: “Power in the hands of people who are out of sync with God will lead to disaster.”

Eternal life for Adam and Eve (and their offspring) in a post-sin world would not be pleasant. Imagine endless existence in a fleshly state that had no possibility of indwelt communion with the Creator. Adam and Eve didn’t just need physical immortality, they needed redemption.

In the case of Babel, a similar trajectory is noted. The progress of secular humanism would provide empty success. Sure, stuff would get accomplished. Research and development would happen. But while a proud, godless humanity was trying to “make a name for itself," the results would be fragmented and disjointed because civilization wouldn’t operate in harmony with the Creator of the universe. If left to their own skill sets, humans would learn to rely on themselves more and more, growing increasingly dependent upon their own minds and strength and less open to the sort of Divine trust and reliance that the imago Dei was created to experience.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite Chesterton quotes here—a quote that I have mentioned dozens of times already and plan to mention dozens of times more. It’s that good.

"The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone."

What can we learn here about rooting our gifts in the center of Jesus? The temptation to "make a name for ourselves" is still kicking today. How do we do the work of creation and cultivation without running into dependence upon our own strength? How do move outward in faith from a true, operational core?

Genesis 12-15, Psalm 4

After six months overseas, our oldest son came home this week for a few days before returning to college. We won’t see him again for a good long while yet, so I’m soaking up the hours while he is here.  I’ll write more after he leaves tomorrow, but for now, here’s the reading and a video for this part of the week.


Genesis 12-15, Psalm 4
Video: Genesis 12-50

"The Torah" and Genesis 8-11

Today we are reading Genesis 8-11 in the Torah.  (Be sure to check out The Bible Project's free app if you want to make accessibility even easier.)

We are also watching this video from The Bible Project. which is fabulous. I think you'll be glad that you spent five minutes on this when it's over. https://www.bible.com/videos/1095-genesis-part-1-the-bible-project

A second piece of writing that fits pretty well into this theme can be found here.  Though I'm not crazy about some of the political decisions the AFA has made over the past two years, I think Bryan Fischer's conclusions on the sin of Ham are worth checking out. 

Once Upon a Time, God Was Sorry (Genesis 6)

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Genesis 6:5-8

"Noah and the Ark" by Marc Chagall (1966)

What an unusual passage! It shows us God’s vulnerability—what seems to be the emotional fatigue* of a creative genius who is watching his masterpiece fall to pieces. A few verses earlier, God has said, "My spirit shall not always strive with man," which shows us that God has been appealing to and wrestling with people who stubbornly resist a union that could bring beauty and life to the earth.

Sometimes I forget that when Jesus appeared in the flesh to allow himself to be hurt by humans, he was stepping into a greater narrative--he was continuing in a Divine suffering that began in the emotional realm thousands of years earlier. Since the first days of our existence, we have hurt God. Over and again, he has laid open the wideness of his heart for us to pierce.

Of all the non-Christian beliefs that I have studied, I find Deism most tragic. This worldview suggests that an unengaged god whipped up a clockwork universe before checking out--a slap in the face to an intimate Lord who has repeatedly made himself vulnerable to us. "God isn't dead—he just doesn’t care," they say.  Yet in Genesis 6, we find a God who didn’t simply hover over the earth at creation, but who hovers bare-chested, within firing range of the continual rebellion of man.

The old word “repenteth” sometimes throws cerebral readers for a loop, leading them to ask why an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful God would have a need to repent.** But the shock of this word also holds its fiercest beauty. “Repenteth” connotes the heavy sigh that emerges from our lungs when we are suffering grief. A shudder. A gasp of sorrow.

What could evoke such a response in the God of the universe? To find out, let's unpack two words from verse five: “every imagination." 

Once again, I love the King James translation best. Instead of the more humanistic, cerebral wording of the ESV (“every intention”), "every imagination" captures a truer picture of the essence of humans. These people weren't just processors--they were free-agent inventors, made in the image of God. 

If you’ve been following along with The Bible Project,*** you know that humans were formed imago Dei to be creative. God made us “like him” so that we might rule and fill the earth. We were given God’s image, commissioned (and entrusted) to have a micro-god-like sovereignty on the earth. But instead of blossoming in this role, humans were using their liberty and potential to do harm.

As God looks down on his sons and daughters, he sees those beloved artists that he has made, divine offspring that he has placed in a planet full of resources for invention and design. But all this is thrown away--beings formed in his likeness are using the gift of creative force to do work that is anti-life.

Think about this from God’s perspective. He’s given humans a unique ability among all life forms--the ability to innovate, to rule, to bring order. Instead, they have chosen to invent greed and violence. They are creative in death and destruction instead of in life and beauty. They hover over the surface of the earth and whisper, "Let there be chaos."

This passage reminds me of a principle that Dorothy Sayers teaches while discussing the origin of evil. She writes that Shakespeare’s creation of Hamlet automatically creates a second category of non-Hamlet. Anything that isn’t Hamlet is necessarily non-Hamlet. However, a third category could also arise if consciousness and will were ever imparted to a play. In such a situation, non-Hamlet could also become anti-Hamlet.

A similar principle applies to the creative nature. In the midst of the world that God made, he entrusted consciousness and will to humanity.  By doing so, human creativity was automatically given the potential to become anti-God. We zoom into the middle of this spiral toward darkness in Genesis 6, where we find a God grown sick over the inclinations of humanity. In his grief, he nearly wipes the whole self-defeating project off the earth. Why give such freedom to creatures who will only propagate harm?

Then he sees Noah, a man whose Hebrew name evokes a different sort of sigh than the sigh of despair. In Noah, we find the sigh of a long rest. The old word “repose” fits here. Imagine the breath Frodo takes as he wakes up in Rivendell after a terrible journey. Imagine the sleep a parent sinks into at last after finding out that her adult child has made it safely home after a long drive on icy roads.

God looks upon the creative power of humanity and sees his entrusted image used to destroy and to wound—until he gets to Noah. In this one man, he sees potential for the sort of God-man union he desires. In Noah resides imago-Dei innovation that listens to the heartbeat of the Creator and follows its creative commission—even when that commission runs as counter-cultural as a set of boat blueprints for a land in which rain never falls.

- - -

*At first blush, it might seem that God's exasperation in Genesis 6 contradicts teachings like Isaiah 40:28. "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable." However, if humans can feel frustration while possessing moral strength, couldn't God do so at an even higher level? I think it's possible for God to be "tired" of a given dynamic without having the type of fatigue that lessens his power. Part of the confusion here results from the metaphorical nature of all human language, but if we look at how being alive and responsive actually works in us, we can follow that trajectory and catch a better understanding of God's complexity as well.

**I suppose it's necessary to develop certain formal principles of stand-alone doctrine, but we should always be aware that such principles have the potential to distort interpretation if we idolize them. The text itself trumps human conclusions about the text. Always. When our doctrine doesn't allow for the nuances of Scripture to stand, doctrine should become subservient to mystery.

***Jon and Tim aren’t the only thinkers to suggest the divine, human commission of Genesis. If you’re interested in this topic, I’d particularly suggest Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making to unpack the call of humans to be artists and gardeners. And if you’re up for a little bit harder (but even better) read, Dorothy Sayers’s The Mind of the Maker integrates the creative process with the divine calling of humanity.

Some Extended Thoughts on the "Image of God" from the Bible Project

Instead of writing my own post today, I decided to share this conversation between the creators of The Bible Project. The offer an interesting take on the imago Dei. I'm hoping to give it a second listen before the day is over. If you have time to listen, what do you think about this?

https://thebibleproject.simplecast.fm/episodes/f106a5fc/image-of-god-part-2-god-and-human-s-makeover

Today's Assignments from "The Bible Project"

Here's today's video from The Bible Project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbipxLDtY8c

Genesis 4-7 and Psalm 2 are today's Scripture passages (BTW, the "Read Scripture" app is free and makes finding all this so simple.)

I'm also including four companion podcasts on this topic that you might find interesting. These are more in-depth discussions, so don't stress if you don't have time to get to them. However, in case you enjoy listening to this style of teaching, I wanted to let you know that the resources exist.

1. Image of God: Part 1 Humans as Middle Management

https://thebibleproject.simplecast.fm/episodes/70e124fb/image-of-god-part-1-humans-as-middle-managment

2. Image of God: Part 2 God and Human's Makeover

https://thebibleproject.simplecast.fm/episodes/f106a5fc/image-of-god-part-2-god-and-human-s-makeover

3. Image of God: Part 3 The Garden was Not Perfect

https://thebibleproject.com/podcast/image-god-part-3/

4. Image of God: Part 4 The Glory of God

https://thebibleproject.simplecast.fm/episodes/75bd0e4f/image-of-god-part-4-glory-of-god

Apples to Oranges (Genesis 4:2b-7)

"Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”

(Genesis 4:2b-7)

PhotoCredit: ditfeet on Morguefile

Cain and Abel had different jobs, so the gifts they gave God were like apples and oranges. Abel brought livestock. Cain brought fruit and vegetables. How would you ever compare those two offerings?

But God could see straight into the motives of both men. He knew that Abel brought the best he had and that Cain did not.

A nice cut of meat couldn’t impress a God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, of course. So what’s actually going on here? Let’s take a look at a word the KJV uses for God’s reaction--instead of “regard,” the Lord is said to “respect” one offering more than the other.

The Hebrew term for “regard/respect” seems to involve more than cold, intellectual assessment--it’s an expression of feeling as well. It means that you’ve taken time to inspect and consider something deeply, and what you’ve found in it moves your emotions.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the O’Henry short story, “The Gift of the Magi.” In this beautiful old tale, an impoverished husband and wife secretly sacrifice their most beloved possessions so they can buy extravagant gifts to give one another on Christmas morning. O’Henry concludes the story with these lines:

“…here I have told you the story of two children who were not wise. Each sold the most valuable thing he owned in order to buy a gift for the other. But let me speak a last word to the wise of these days: Of all who give gifts, these two were the most wise. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the most wise.”

Despite the dozens of times I’ve read this story, such pure devotion always puts lump in my throat. In a hardened and cynical world, these two little fools shine so bright.

Likewise, the Great God who was wounded by the distrust of Adam and Eve looked down upon the earth and saw a single male child born of that couple who had hidden from God and stolen from God. Yet instead of trying to pull apart from God, Abel ran toward him. He willingly chose the most beautiful “fruit” of his flock, and he sacrificed it. Instead of holding what was precious close to his chest as his parents had, he put it on the altar and gave it to God.

God’s “respect” isn’t an analytical reaction. He’s not a greedy tax collector who is excited over big net gains. He is a Heavenly Father who is moved like all of us would be in the face of a pure gift of radical trust. He sees what Abel is actually offering. Like a husband on Christmas morning who sees that his wife has sold her beautiful hair out of love for him, the Lord's mighty heart is stirred.

As goofed up as hot-and-cold King David was, we see him making a similar choice in II Samuel 24:24. David wants to build an offer on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, and Araunah offers the land for free. But David wants to incorporate trust into his offering, so he says, “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing.”

This sort of giving isn’t legalism. It’s not an attempt to earn God’s heart by human performance. It’s about using the tangible stuff of earth to pass through a portal into the unseen. It's about living an earthly life that diagnoses the deepest posture of our souls. Jesus alludes to this sort of transport in his parable of the shrewd manager. He says,

“make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings” (Luke 16).

The dirty street currency of the flatlands can be used actively in the realm of God. How strange. I’m reminded of MacDonald’s novel Lilith here, a story about a dual reality in which the doings of one realm impact another. It’s difficult for us to see in both dimensions simultaneously, but this sort of vision expresses the life of the faithful.

In the visible realm, Cain was just offering a bunch of vegetables--but in the eternal world, he was standing before God holding back from him, not completely trusting him, saying, “You can have this much of me, but no more.”

It rattles me a little to think that the barriers I put up between myself and God might impact not just his evaluation of me—but also his emotions toward me. Could I really move the heart of the maker of the universe? What would it mean to a God who looks down on the rebellion of the human race day after day to hear one of his children say, “Papa, here is everything. I trust your heart with my whole world”?

 I’m scared to do it. My impulse is to hold back parts and pieces from him, flinching, and saying, “I’ll reserve these three things because I would die if you took them. I love what I see and feel more than I love you. You can have the peripheral parts of my life as worship, but you cannot have the core of me.” But God knows apples from oranges, and when I choose to yield it all, he knows what I’m giving, and it moves him.

You are Dust (Genesis 3:19)

“for you are dust,
    and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19, ESV)

Photo Credit: Morguefile (Alvimann)

The noun used for “dust” (“aphar”) here is fascinating to me. It not only means dust (as most of us know it), but also clay, earth, mud, ashes, mortar, powder, or rubbish. That word has 110 occurrences in the text, and if you will click on that link to see how else it is used in the Bible, I think you’ll find that it generally refers to “the stuff of earth.”

In fact, “aphar” is the same noun used in Genesis 2:7—“then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

I always think of this word when I encounter rabid literalists who attempt to force believers into extreme interpretative choices. When arguing for a 24-hour, six-day creation, for example, they suggest that Hebrew usage of a word like "yom" (which means "day") reduces to a bifurcation fallacy: “Is Moses, and by extension, God, trying to deceive us by not telling us the truth about the length of the "days?"

While I don’t have an issue with God's ability to produce a literal, six-day creation, I do have an issue with how this argument is constructed. As someone who spends a lot of time in modes of classical logic and rhetoric, a manipulative, illogical, unstable approach to exegesis drives me nuts. Note carefully the implication being made here. This writer is suggesting that if Moses (or God) chose to utilize figurative language, this would indicate a failure of character. The writer is equivocating metaphorical language with a lying heart. 

And yet, in this same book of the Bible, we find "aphar" used metaphorically by Moses and by God. God tells us that Adam is dust and that to dust he will return. If metaphorical language indicates a weakness of God’s character, then Adam (present tense) must be only a pile of physical dust—which we know (from other verses) that he is not.

So does the same accusation used for "yom" apply to "aphar"? Should we also ask: “Is Moses, and by extension, God, trying to deceive us by not telling us the truth about Adam being dust? No. Adam must be literal dust, or else the character of God and Moses is false.” Of course not. Instead, we trust that whether God is speaking by metaphor or by declaration, his heart is good and his words are true.

As willing as I am to believe that God created the universe in six literal days, I refuse to be sucked into the contemporary Charybdis of nervous, strained methods of interpretation. I’m weary of cultural leaders who maneuver naïve believers by either/or fallacies because they are dead set on winning earthly battles.

Increasingly, I am starting to wonder if Christian scientists without formal literary training should be entrusted with Biblical exegesis any more than Christian literary scholars should be entrusted with brain surgery. A humble grandmother with no formal education, a woman who has walked in daily submission to God for decades, seems to have a better shot at handling the word of God accurately than an overconfident empiricist determined to humanism with humanism. A lack of exposure to proper interpretative methods, exacerbated by the pride of materialistic qualifications, has such a toxic impact on Biblical understanding. It imparts hubris without depth and causes the itch for earthly dominance to contort the words of God.

This morning I was reading Luke 3-4, and I was moved by the way Jesus engaged with the crowds. After refusing the honor of men during the temptations of Satan, he then refused the honor of his hometown in such an extreme way that his own people tried to throw him off of a cliff!

Luke tells us that Christ was full of the Holy Spirit—he didn’t let the urgency of the issues of humans determine his course of action. He was so in sync with the Father and the Spirit, he listened only to this guidance.

I think there is great wisdom to be learned here in interpreting the Scriptures. Instead of frantically asking what we need to prove to the crowds, we can sit before the Bible and say, “What will you have me do?”

With this posture, we find in those glorious six days of Creation, a God who expresses the nuances of his sovereignty (as we learned Tuesday). He declares his abilities to innovate, to separate, to order, to determine, and to fill.

Then we find this sovereignty extended into a God who speaks like a poet while describing the fall of humanity—you are dust, and to dust you are going to return. You haven’t chosen to rise above the rubble (the material world) from which I made you. You have chosen to be no more than the beasts.

Riveting.

This is what he says before he uses the skins of beasts (which would have required the first visible death--showing Adam what it really meant to be “dust”) to clothe them. This act would have simultaneously taught Adam what his sin cost and foreshadowed the death of the Lamb.

How many times have I sinned against God and found that without him I am dust? Though God has proven his ability to create, to separate, to order, to determine, and to fill, I have chosen my own way instead. By defying the great Current of the universe, I have obliterated my own potential.

If you are familiar with what remains of a human after cremation, you know that human ashes aren’t just dust but also bits of bone and teeth--fragments disturbingly indicative of the life that has gone.

When I think of my own sin, and when I think of Adam’s--when I think of God’s proclamation here in Genesis 3--I think of this image. I think of Lot’s wife turning to look back at Sodom and turning to salt--a self-imposed incineration that says to the God who wants to commune with us, “I will not conform to your eternal flow of life. I choose to be an animal. I choose to be the aphar—the rubble of earth.”

That is the telos of sin. That is the end of autonomy.