Why?

Until now my goal has been to shock.


It's like when TV ads throw up pictures of starving children with distended bellies during our football games.  Here we are enjoying the game - not to mention too much food and drink - and the rapid fire beer ads, car ads, restaurant ads roll off us, or at most make a soft impact ("ha, ha, ha...what was that an ad for?").  Then the music goes somber and BAM! - staring us in the face is that child with the dark, sunken eyes and the swollen stomach and the flies crawling all over her.


It's unwelcome, disturbing, inappropriate even.  We're sitting here trying to have a little fun with friends!  Why do they have to put that stuff on there?


It's because it is very hard to get our attention, especially about things that we don't want to think about.  We don't want to be reminded that there are children starving in Ethiopia, and we certainly don't want to see pictures of them!  We want to live in the comfortable reality that we have constructed for ourselves - even if it is a lie.


Sometimes we need to be shocked into reality.  Sometimes we need to be smacked up-side the head with truth and have our noses rubbed in it.  Smelling salts are useful if the person has lost consciousness.


But, following my method of allowing my Scripture reading to guide me in this blog, I want to shift gears a little from shocking to explaining.


O.k...God is different than I thought he was - different than I've been hearing about in church.  So, what's going on here?


I think we get a glimpse into this different worldview in Psalm 83.


This Psalm starts out like many of the imprecatory Psalms:

• God, please hear our prayer and act.
• Your enemies are treating your children very badly.
• Here's what they are doing.
• A call for judgment ("As fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountains ablaze, so may you pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane!")

But there is something different in verses 16-18.


   Fill their faces with shame,
      that they may seek your name, O LORD.
   Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever;
      let them perish in disgrace,
   that they may know that you alone,
       whose name is the LORD,
      are the Most High over all the earth.




Notice that it isn't only out of anger and vengeance that God's people are calling out for judgment on this nation.  There are two explanatory statements in this passage.  Why should God bring judgment on this nation?
   "that they may seek your name, O LORD."
and
   "that they may know that you alone, whose name is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth."


This is HUGE!  The righteous reason for God to judge people is to defend and uphold the honor of his name!  A nation that defames God by failing to honor him as God is worthy of terrible judgment.


But...This is also the Gospel!  Part of God working to uphold his honor in the universe is by working redemptively - even in judgment - to show mercy to his enemies.


Notice:  this is not a person-centered gospel where God is working to redeem wicked people because he likes them so much.  This is a God-centered gospel where he saves his own enemies for the purpose of displaying his kindness and thus magnifying his glory.


Simply put, God saves us to make himself look good.

God Wants Babies Killed and Women Raped (Isaiah 13)

I'm not intentionally going in an anti Pro-Life direction here.  I'm just following the themes that come up in my Bible reading plan.

Isaiah 13

In this oracle, Isaiah sees God mustering an army to execute his judgment on his enemies (Babylon).  Granted, God is using another nation to smite these people, but Isaiah leaves no doubt that God is the general ordering these troops (3-5):


I myself have commanded my consecrated ones,
   and have summoned my mighty men to execute my anger...

The LORD of hosts is mustering
   a host for battle...
the LORD and the weapons of his indignation,
   to destroy the whole land.

What does this punishment of God on sinful people look like?  Brutal and merciless!


Behold, the day of the LORD comes,
   cruel, with wrath and fierce anger,
to make the land a desolation
   and to destroy its sinners from it....
I will punish the world for its evil,
   and the wicked for their iniquity;
I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant,
    and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless.
I will make people more rare than fine gold,
   and mankind than the gold of Ophir.
Therefore I will make the heavens tremble,
   and the earth will be shaken out of its place,
at the wrath of the LORD of hosts
   in the day of his fierce anger.
Whoever is found will be thrust through,
   and whoever is caught will fall by the sword.
Their infants will be dashed in pieces
   before their eyes;
their houses will be plundered
   and their wives ravished.

[The Medes'] bows will slaughter the young men;
   they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb;
   their eyes will not pity children.


Here we see God actively planning and orchestrating the cruel slaughter of men, women, and, yes, children.  Here God ordains that the army of the Medes kill the Babylonians by impaling them with spears and chopping them to bits with swords.  It is God's express will that the Medes smash the Babylonians' kids into pieces before their eyes and steal their possessions and rape their women.

Is God being kind and loving and merciful to sinners here?  Is God being mean and nasty and unjust?  What could the Babylonians have possibly done to DESERVE such a fate?  Can anyone DESERVE something like this?

David, the Man After God's Own Heart: Hates Sinners

Psalm 139 was the last straw.

I've been thinking about this blog for a long time.  I've even talked about it to some friends - who all looked at me with that "we will disavow any knowledge of you" look.  I know that hardly anyone will even read these entries, so maybe it's just therapeutic.  But who knows...

Anyway...Psalm 139.

This Psalm is a great example of what I mentioned in my first entry: the church's tendency to take the parts they like about God and his Word, and ignore (or even cover over) the stuff they don't.

Psalm 139 is the banner that Pro-Life people fly over their cause.  In it David waxes worshipfully about the wonder of how God made him.  What's especially compelling in the early verses of that Psalm is the beautiful and amazing observations the psalmist makes about the way God was intimately involved in putting little baby David together in his mom's tummy.  It powerfully proclaims the truth that David was a person, known and loved, while still "just a fetus".

It is no wonder we anti-baby killing folks love this passage!

But we almost always stop reading this passage at somewhere around verse 16.  Sometimes we'll bleed over into verses 17 and 18 (they talk about how wonderful God's thoughts are).

I get it.  It's pro-life Sunday.  You want to read the verses that apply to that theme.  Totally appropriate.

You will also hear people use verses 23 and 24 quite a bit.  They are great devotional, introspection verses ("Search me, O God, and know my heart...").  Great communion service meditation material.

But do you see a "hole in the whole" here?  What happened to verses 19-22?  Let's take a quick read of those verses and see if they sound familiar to you:

Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
   O men of blood, depart from me!
They speak against you with malicious intent;
   your enemies take your name in vain!
Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
   And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred;
   I count them my enemies.

Whoa...!  What the...?!  Wasn't David just making the case that every person is precious?  And didn't he end this Psalm in a very soft-hearted, penitent, worshipful manner?

But here in these verses he is calling God - the loving God who made each one of these precious enemies who have a "right to life" - to "slay" them!

The ironic thing here is that I'd be willing to bet my iPhone that the death David has in mind for these folks is several degrees less humane than a modern-day execution, and probably even more gory than many abortive procedures.  He wants God to rip these people to shreds and trample them in the dust.


Maybe it wouldn't surprise you (on second look) to realize that, from start to finish, Psalm 139 is mainly about how great God is and how humans should respond to him.  If we saw that, maybe it wouldn't shock us to hear the "man after God's own heart" so unabashedly proclaim his "complete hatred" and his wishes for God to slaughter those who set themselves up against the kingship of the sovereign king of the universe.


Before we immediately jump into "that was the Old Testament - this is the New Testament!!" paroxisms, maybe we should pause to see if there is anything here that can stretch us.


I'll leave it like this: If David is a man after God's own heart and David has such a red-hot hatred of the enemies of God, does this show us anything about the heart of God toward sinners?  

Defending God?

I feel compelled.

It is always precarious to strike out in defense of something that is bigger and stronger than oneself.  But that is exactly what I intend to do.

I intend to defend God.

But, then again, maybe what I aim to do is less like defending God and more like uncovering him.  After all, part of the root meaning of the Hebrew word for "glorify" is "to reveal".

Charles Spurgeon (the great Reformed Baptist preacher) said, "Scripture is like a lion. Who ever heard of defending a lion? Just turn it loose; it will defend itself."

So, what I really want to do is show off God, in all of his splendor, his perfections, his complexity, his beauty...his awful, terrible, wonderful glory!

So why do I feel compelled?

Because, increasingly, I see Christians, pastors, authors, whole churches and denominations covering up large parts of God.  Maybe they don't understand those parts.  Maybe they don't like those parts. Maybe those parts of God confuse, offend, frighten or embarrassed them.  I don't know why they do it.  But they do.  Christians are pulling a tarp over God.

There are PARTS of God they really LIKE.  So much so that they organize their lives and communities around it.  Otherwise they wouldn't even bother with him.

But those other parts are bothersome.  They don't fit.  They cause problems.  They don't sell well.

So rather than try to deal with them, we just cover them up.

But I am convinced to the very core of my being that if we don't take God whole, as he really is...we don't take him at all.  If we only take the parts of God that we like, we are really making our own god...one that is not God at all.

The effect is that, at best, we are impoverished and anemic.  Our lives and our churches are shallow and lacking in power and joy.

At worst, if we don't have the real, One True God:  we are lost...we are damned.  And we're dragging others down with us in the name of God and the gospel.

It turns out that despite all of the problems and discomfort and even real trauma that it can cause, we actually need all of God.  

He is good, but he is also terrible.  And we need that good and terrible God.

What I am saying here is illustrated well by a scene from C. S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," where the children are being told about this King Aslan that they are soon to meet.

“Ooh!” said Susan, “Is he safe? I feel quite nervous about meeting a lion.”

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you."

 It's time to unleash the Lion!