Oddities

Stuff I Don’t Get: Finishing Badly–Or Not at All

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Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.
—1 Corinthians 9:24

Nothing is more difficult for Christians to deal with than a lost, dying relative. We all want the people we love to make it to heaven. Which is why so many of us hope for that deathbed confession by a long wayward father or irascible aunt. And many times, that confession does come. I know that in my church I hear those stories all the time.

But the one story you don’t seem to hear much comes from the other side of the coin.

What about those stalwart Christians who give 50-plus good years of service to God but in those last couple years before passing on seem to lose their way?

Fact is, I’ve witnessed this a lot. That beloved soul who ministered the Gospel so effectively and vibrantly for years goes into himself in the end of life, gets grumpy, loses that holy smile, and just fades out.

I’ve known people who loved God’s word like no one else yet in the last months or years of life lost all zeal for the Scriptures. The pillar of the church who always talked about Jesus suddenly stops doing so. That elderly saint with the warm heart sees it go cold.

Why does this happen? And why don’t I ever hear anyone talking about it? I’ve got to believe that I’m not the only one who has witnessed this phenomenon.

In those situations, what of perseverance of the saints? Does God allow some kind of special grace here? Or is this a failure to finish the race or some kind of long-delayed negative portion of the sower parable, that seed that grew and finally succumbed 60 years later to the strangling weeds?

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

And God knows that’s not how I want to finish the race.

Congregations Gone Wild

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The New York Times opinion page had an op-ed piece published by a United Church of Christ pastor who lamented the record numbers of clergy burning out. Here’s his opening salvo:

The American clergy is suffering from burnout, several new studies show. And part of the problem, as researchers have observed, is that pastors work too much. Many of them need vacations, it’s true. But there’s a more fundamental problem that no amount of rest and relaxation can help solve: congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest calling.

The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways. But churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them. It’s apparent in the theater-style seating and giant projection screens in churches and in mission trips that involve more sightseeing than listening to the local people.

As a result, pastors are constantly forced to choose, as they work through congregants’ daily wish lists in their e-mail and voice mail, between paths of personal integrity and those that portend greater job security. As religion becomes a consumer experience, the clergy become more unhappy and unhealthy.

As they say in the blog world, read the whole thing: “Congregations Gone Wild.”

Apart from the fact that the author is a pastor in the United Church of Christ (mainline, non-evangelical, and compromised to the nth degree) is his point still valid? And does it extend to more evangelical churches? What are we to make of the vision of the congregation today when compared to its leaders? Are the people in the seats simply more worldly and self-centered than their counterparts of 50 years ago?

And what are we to do about this?

Your thoughts are appreciated. Please leave a comment below.

Stuff I Don’t Get: Is Left Right?

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We all know this passage from the OT:

It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.
—Deuteronomy 31:8

The NT frames it this way:

And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
—Matthew 28:20b

But not as many people know this passage, one that makes for a series of puzzling questions:

And Hezekiah himself stopped the upper water courses of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah was blessed in all his works. But, in regard to the ambassadors of the rulers of Babylon who sent to him to ask about the wonder that was done in the land, God left him in order to try him, to know all that was in his heart. And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and his goodness, behold, they are written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, and in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel.
—2 Chronicles 32:30-32

So, when this righteous king, one of the few bright lights to sit upon the throne, Hezekiah and the Babylonian Envoysneeded God’s wisdom to know how to deal with Babylonian envoys, God leaves Hezekiah in order to test him?

The Hebrew word for left is pretty strong: ‘ âzab. One of its connotations is to forsake.

Hezekiah was a pillar of virtue. Sin was not the reason God left him at that point.

The passage said that God did this to see what was in Hezekiah’s heart. Didn’t He already know?

If Hezekiah had responded in some odd way, would this have surprised God?

Why test a king who had consistently proven himself good?

This is Babylon Hezekiah’s dealing with, not some podunk nation. Wouldn’t God’s presence and help be essential?

If nothing good can come out of a man apart from God, what’s going on here?

And sure, the Holy Spirit always indwells believers, but did God do this personal test with one of His own just this one time in 2 Chronicles? Or does He do something akin to this “leave in order to test” with believers today?

Nearly all the commentaries I have note that 2 Kings 20:13-21 expands what happens, as Hezekiah shows the envoys everything in his kingdom. Some commentators say that this proves that Hezekiah loved earthly riches and did not value God as much as he should. Or that he did not point the envoys to God by explaining the miraculous retrogression of the sun (Isaiah 38:4-8) or his own deathbed recovery (earlier in Isaiah 38). Yet this is what the Bible says elsewhere about Hezekiah:

In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah, king of Israel, Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi the daughter of Zechariah. And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, according to all that David his father had done. He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan). He trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. For he held fast to the LORD. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the LORD commanded Moses. And the LORD was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him. He struck down the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified city.
—2 Kings 18:1-8

So this is a man who doesn’t really love God as he ought? And God left him?

For me, 2 Chronicles 32:31 is one of the oddest verses in the entire Bible. I just can’t make any sense of it. If you can, please clue me in!