Poverty

The Finger in the Mirror

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We hear the word repentance bandied about in Christians circles, and in some of those circles, it’s practically a mantra. The list of things we Christians need to repent from is an arm long, filled with things like lust, jealousy, faithlessness, failure to tithe, lack of a decent quiet time, etc.

We also hear pastors and parachurch leaders going on and on about the culture wars. Each day seems to bring a new call to arms from some ministry or self-appointed Christian leader to pray and/or write our political reps over homosexual marriage, abortion, Obama’s health care package, illegal immigration, the rise of Islam and jihad, and so on. The list is nearly endless.

But what I NEVER hear is a combination of the two messages that asks Christians to repent for our complicity in helping to empower the very culture war problems we fight. Never.

A friend sent me a call to prayer for the gathering of Muslims due to take place Friday, Sept. 26, 2009,  in Washington, D.C. Evidently, Islam is trying yet again to market itself as the religion of peace, even as it promotes Sharia law, says little about terrorism,  and advocates a host of legalistic follies that oppose the Gospel of Grace and send millions into a Christless eternity.

When I read that call to prayer arms, I had to ask the question that Christians in America avoid at all cost: In what ways am I at fault for this?

A few thoughts to consider:

  • If American Christians had continued to follow the way of Jesus in ministering to the sick, would we have the health care debate now tearing our country apart?
  • If American Christians had continued to follow the way of Jesus in caring for the orphan, the widow, and the elderly, would we have abortion on demand and a nearly bankrupt Social Security system?
  • If American Christians had continued to follow the way of Jesus in visiting the prisoner, would we have a sky-high recidivism rate?
  • If American Christians had continued to follow the way of Jesus in caring for the poor, Do we truly believe He is the answer?would we have government welfare and the burden of having fostered a society-wide victim mentality?
  • If American Christians had continued to follow the way of Jesus in loving the outcast, would we still be fighting the homosexual agenda on its proponents’ terms or battling race and illegal immigration  issues?
  • If American Christians had continued to follow the way of Jesus by actually obeying His  Great Commission, would we be fighting Islam in this country or dealing with any of the culture wars we seemingly can’t wait to engage with calls to prayers and letters to our congressman?

I would offer that the answer to these and other questions like them is a simple NO.

I would offer that we Christians are as much to blame for the condition we find ourselves in as any of our supposed foes are, but you won’t hear that from the pulpits or from parachurch ministry leaders.

When the Church of Jesus fails to do what the Gospel asks of us, something will fill the vacuum created by our absence. And I can guarantee this: We will not like what fills the vacuum.

Honestly, the denial on our parts sucks the life out of me. And yet we will go on and on about our foes, the way the government does things we don’t like, or the next moral truth to come under assault.

We talk about our nation being a Christian one, but in truth, we’re Christian in name only. If we’re not living the Gospel, then of course everything will go to hell. Why would we be surprised at that?

Do we still believe that Jesus changes lives? Do we believe that Jesus is the answer to all of life’s issues? Then we better stop living as if we don’t.

The Real Sins of Sodom

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'The Destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah' by John MartinOn Monday,  I wrote concerning Christians who err by judging the failings of others while simultaneously forgetting to examine themselves to check for their own complicity in those failings.

Today, I want to look at the notorious city of Sodom.

Long the hallmark of wickedness, Sodom is repeatedly held up in the Bible as an example of how NOT to live. And if you’ve been around American Evangelicalism long enough, you’ve been drilled on the exact reason God destroyed Sodom. (Hint: We get the word sodomy from this particular association.)

If you’re still lost on the reason, Genesis 19 is the standard text. Lot’s life in the city and what befalls him, his divine guests, and his immediate family are laid out for all to see, as are the despicable actions of the denizens of the city of Sodom:

The two angels came to Sodom at evening. Lot sat in the gate of Sodom. Lot saw them, and rose up to meet them. He bowed himself with his face to the earth, and he said, “See now, my lords, please turn aside into your servant’s house, stay all night, wash your feet, and you will rise up early, and go on your way.” They said, “No, but we will stay in the street all night.” He urged them greatly, and they came in with him, and entered into his house. He made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter. They called to Lot, and said to him, “Where are the men who came in to you this night? Bring them out to us, that we may have sex with them.” Lot went out to them to the door, and shut the door after him. He said, “Please, my brothers, don’t act so wickedly. See now, I have two virgin daughters. Please let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them what seems good to you. Only don’t do anything to these men, because they have come under the shadow of my roof.” They said, “Stand back!” Then they said, “This one fellow came in to live as a foreigner, and he appoints himself a judge. Now will we deal worse with you, than with them!” They pressed hard on the man Lot, and drew near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and brought Lot into the house to them, and shut the door. They struck the men who were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves to find the door. The men said to Lot, “Do you have anybody else here? Sons-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whoever you have in the city, bring them out of the place: for we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before Yahweh that Yahweh has sent us to destroy it.”
—Genesis 19:1-13 (WEB)

Cut and dried, right? Homosexuality was the primary reason God destroyed Sodom.

Well, maybe not.

I was reading in Ezekiel today and came across the following passage. The context is that God is chastising His chosen people for being even more sinful than the wicked nations that surrounded them:

“Behold, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you: ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ You are the daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and her children; and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. And your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. Not only did you walk in their ways and do according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. As I live, declares the Lord GOD, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it….”
—Ezekiel 16:44-50 (emphasis mine)

What is fascinating about this passage is that God explicitly names what it was about Sodom that caused Him to destroy them:

1. Pride
2. Excess food
3. Prosperous ease
4. Lack of love for the poor and needy
5. Haughtiness
6. Practicing an abomination

While not explicitly named, the abomination that was practiced surely included homosexuality.  Exchanging heterosexual practice for homosexual is an abomination because it mocks the created order and the character of God. (I have written about this previously in “Sex and the Created Order.”)

But for us Christians in America who love to hold out the homosexual agenda as the worst possible thing to happen to our country, please note the five explicitly named sins that preceded the sixth.

I can wait while you read the list again.

When I read those top five, they nearly define American Evangelicalism circa 2009.

The pride of having somehow “arrived” with our Christian radio stations and our Jesus T-shirts, the Time and Newsweek cover articles proclaiming our ascendancy, and the whole of our Evangelical subculture that seduces us into thinking that we are somehow living in the world but are not of it

The gluttony evident by the number of morbidly obese “saints” who never met a pantry they didn’t like or an all-you-can-eat buffet they could ignore, and the hording of food that allows us to feel safe and well insulated against the “childish” idea of “Give us this day our daily bread”

The vacation homes, McMansions, iPhones, Playstations, spa trips, Christian cruises, and amassed luxury that we so often attribute to God’s imprimatur on our “righteous” lifestyles

The blind eye we turn to the destitute, the alien, and the least of these—the very ones who signify Christ Himself

The self-reverential belief that we are better than those around us who do not show the same outward manifestation of our blessings, and the certainty of heaven for us because we alone have done it right while our clueless neighbor has done every last shred of it wrong

Five devastating, explicitly named indictments of God against Sodom, yet for some reason, all we can think about is the sixth, because that final one applies to the other guy—you know, the flambouyant one with all the Streisand CDs.

Dear God, bring us to repentance before it is too late.

Wicked, Wicked, Wicked, Wicked…Righteous

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House of the wicked?The local community newspaper listed eight foreclosures in the last week, all residences. That’s just in one week.

I had a hard time reading that and not getting misty-eyed. Eight families, no home.

At that rate, we’ll have 416 foreclosures in 2009 in my locality. Frankly, given the trend of things around here, I’m thinking the real number will tally somewhere closer to 700.

I wish it were zero.

The dread of losing one’s home runs high in most people. In America, it’s the ultimate failure, the financial, social, moral, and intellectual  scarlet letter.

The Bible, in one of its more inscrutable verses, says this:

What the wicked dreads will come upon him, but the desire of the righteous will be granted.
—Proverbs 10:24

When I first started writing Cerulean Sanctum, I got a lot of emails from people with the gist of  “Who do you think you are,  some kind of spiritual brainiac with all the answers?” The letters didn’t last, though. I think enough truth came out in postings here that people realized that I don’t have all the answers, not even remotely.

I don’t know what to do with a verse like the one above. In the case of the righteous of the Old Covenant, one could argue that their end goals were earthly prosperity and a continuing lineage. Time and again, the Old Testament’s discussion of the payout for the righteous takes those two forms. You can’t ignore them.

The New Covenant changes it, at least as I see it, so that Christ is the goal for the righteous.

But it’s not the payout for the righteous that perplexes me, but the wicked’s. The wicked’s jagged little pill bothers me because their end is the same in both the Old and New Testaments. What they dread is what they receive.

So I struggle with this. Not because the wicked should not reap what they sow, but because the Bible seems to make it clear that people will see the practical outcomes of wickedness. They will be clearly visible. We will know who is wicked and who is righteous by what happens to them, not only in the life to come, but in life right now.

Which brings me back to Proverbs 10:24.

I think about those eight foreclosures in my locality, and I apply Proverbs 10:24. Those people who lost their homes received what they dreaded. The verse says it is the wicked who receive what they dread, not the righteous.

Therefore, it would appear that every one of those people who lost their homes to foreclosure were wicked. They could not be righteous.

So I struggle with that. I wonder if Proverbs 10:24 and dozens of verses that say the same essential thing elsewhere in the Scripture are proof-textable clarifications of who is wicked and who is righteous.

Then we come to the following passage and the water murks even more:

When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.” He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm.
—Acts 28:3-5

The thought of the local people: Paul is wicked because of the misfortune that befell him. They seem to be referencing Proverbs 10:24 here.

How does this all fit with the dozens of OT passages that say that the wicked receive misfortune, while the righteous receive good? Hyperbole? Positive thinking? Rainbows and unicorns? Did the New Covenant wipe all those verses away?

So much for being a spiritual brainiac…

Any wise folks out there with some sage wisdom with regards to this topic? Please share. I think that many people in the days to come will be struggling with this same issue and will need to hear godly words.