Sinkholes and the Human Condition

John’s third chapter opens with Jesus in conversation with a highly-respected Jewish leader named Nicodemus. Nicodemus came to Jesus to commend him as man of God, but Jesus doesn’t even acknowledge the compliments. Jesus talks about faith and the proper object of faith. Jesus explains that everyone must be born “again” to see the Kingdom of God. It is also possible to translate the words as “born from above,” that is, spiritually, rather than “again.”

In verses 14-15, Jesus explains why he must be crucified to bring eternal life to everyone who believes in him. Then this:

16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

We almost always recite only verse 16, then stop. But there is the rest of the story and Jesus told it. It is a blunt, unpleasant truth. Jesus drew a genuine distinction between salvation and its lack.

Furthermore, Jesus said that there is no neutral territory. There is no spiritual space where we are neither saved nor unsaved, there is no halftime where we get to ponder the question for awhile off the clock. Jesus said those who do not believe “are condemned already,” that is, unsaved to begin with. This is a “hard teaching,” as Jesus disciples put it about another subject later in John. Either one believes in Jesus or one does not; there is nothing in between.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that he is himself proof that faith is justified. Jesus is clear that he is the actual embodiment of God on earth. To make that confession about Jesus, to affirm his teachings about himself, is to be born “from above,” that is, spiritually reborn by the Spirit of God, just as Jesus was himself born of God.

To believe in Christ is more than merely acknowledging that Christ was a real person. There is a difference between saying, “I believe I have a neighbor” and “I believe in my neighbor.” It is one thing for us to believe that there was a Christ, it is another thing for us to believe in Christ. To believe in Christ is to place one’s destiny in his hands.

 

The story is told of a husband and wife walking in their town when the sidewalk gave way beneath them. It was a sinkhole, and they fell to the bottom, almost twenty feet down. They yelled for help because they knew that the sinkhole would cave in again and bury them. They were, we might say, “condemned already.”

 

Shortly a philosopher came along. He saw their plight and said, “Let me explain to you the metaphysical meaning of sinkholes.”

Next came a psychotherapist, who asked, “Did you ever have arguments with your mother over sinkholes?”

Then came a self-help, motivational speaker, who jumped up and down excitedly and exhorted them, “Yes! Yes, you can! You can get out of that sink hole. Say it after me, now: I can! I can! I can do it!”

Then Professor Schrodinger walked by with his cat and told them, “In another quantum state you are already buried.”

The next fellow was a congressional candidate who said, “Vote for me and I’ll introduce legislation to outlaw sinkholes.”

Then President Trump came by and said, “I would have built a yuuuuuge wall around that sinkhole!”

A lawyer came by and said, “I will help you sue the property owner.”

Their parents came by and told them, “If you loved us you would move out of that sinkhole.”

The county inspector walked up and asked, “Do you have a sinkhole permit?”

A news reporter asked, “Can I get some video of you in the sinkhole?”

An IRS agent informed them, “Medical expenses from sinkhole injuries are deductible only for the amount that exceeds seven and one-half percent of your adjusted gross income.”

Former President Biden came along and told them, "I will send legislation to Congress to send stimulus relief checks for everyone trapped in sinkholes."

An optimist told them, “Cheer up! Things could get worse!”

A pessimist came along and said, “Don't cheer up, things will get worse.”

A Methodist preacher arrived and asked, “Did you know that sinkholes can be used as metaphors for the human condition of John 3.16-19?”

A Buddhist showed up and told them, “The sinkhole is not real.”

A television evangelist told them, “Send me money and I will pray for you to get out of the sinkhole.”

A Hindu guru came along and told them, “The sinkhole is your karma.”

A Zen master walked up and asked, “What is the sound of a sinkhole?”

A Confucian appeared and said, “Confucius says, ‘In all lives there are sinkholes, such is fate.’”

A Muslim approached and said, “It is Allah’s will for you to be in the sinkhole.”

Then Jesus came to the sinkhole. He did not pause to ponder sinkholes or to explain them to the couple trapped there. He just leaped to the bottom of the sinkhole and said, “Jump on my back and I will carry you out of the sinkhole.” And he did.

We are in the season of Lent, of course, and that is the season that even Methodist preachers really, really like. During Lent we get to really hammer sin and bang on the pulpit about what miserable sinners and reprobates make up the human race. During Lent we have a preaching license to give all the explanations and warnings about the sinkhole of human sin. Well, that or something like it has a place in Lenten reflection. I am pretty sure that a lot of people really don’t understand that the sinkhole problem of the human condition is indeed grave. We may wonder about it in the aftermath of horrific crimes in the news, but even those horrors rarely evoke true conviction of the sinkhole problem of human sin.

In 1998 I went on a study trip to Appalachia as part of a course at the Vanderbilt Divinity School. One Sunday we attended a service in a small up-hollow town in coal country. It was a congregation of the Old Regular Baptist church. That was the name of the denomination: Old Regular Baptist. The service started at nine and ended at noon. Three hours of church, five preachers!

It was an engrossing experience. The first preacher was like the guy with a guitar who plays and sings before a Garth Brooks concert: just starting out. He gave a heartfelt testimony but got sung down by the choir because he went on too long. Then there was another man who had preached before. He was more polished. And so it went, each preacher more talented than the one before. After the fourth preacher sat down, everyone took a short break.

Then the choir sang a hymn and the headliner preacher stepped up to the pulpit. At first he spoke slowly, softly, then he picked up the tempo and the volume. He knew about every sin in the book, and apparently somebody in the congregation had done at least one of them recently. Eloquently, he covered all the bases: the human inability to love God right, the need for repentance and the imperative that we throw ourselves at the foot of the cross and pray for the precious blood of Jesus to cleanse us.

By and by he took his coat off. Then a few minutes later he loosened his necktie. Awhile later he rolled up his sleeves. Before long he took out his handkerchief and wiped his sweating brow. “Though our sins be red as scarlet, Jesus will wash them white as snow. Jesus stands at the door and knocks, but in our pride we won’t answer the door – we should be ashamed to leave him standing there in the cold, the one who suffered and died for us.”

And finally, the expected ending: though no one has any right to ask God anything, and none of us are worthy even to untie Jesus’s sandals, from his infinite and incomprehensible grace and love Christ will accept us if we sincerely beg his forgiveness. Then he sat down, the choir sang another hymn, and everyone left.

We don’t always take God very seriously as God, a God who is as close to us our next breath. For sure the Old Regular Baptists up there in Appalachia take God pretty seriously. They live a hard life and they sometimes know a hard God. Their kind of worship is not for us, but the wind of the Spirit blows where it chooses. 

Yet while we need to be reminded that sin is a serious, in fact fatal, condition, we must not lose sight of the great thing about Lent. Lent is about sin, yes, but how much more is it about love and mercy and forgiveness of sin! We think we are doing pretty well and that God must love us because we are doing well and because we are are pretty good people. I mean, look at us: What’s not to love? Yet those Appalachian Baptists knew what Nicodemus had to learn: God does not love us because of who we are, but because of who God is.

Bishop Will Willimon wrote:

In the midst of our trivial moralizing, our scolding and scrambling for a few penitential brownie points, John reminds us of why we’re here. We are on the way of the cross not because of what we have done or left undone but because of what God has done.

The goriest work of human sin gets sidetracked into glorious divine redemption. The prophet is sent not to scold but to save. It was out of love that he came among us and stood beside us and chided us and died with us, for us, and saved us. Love.

Now we remember. It was for this that we began the journey. It was not for sackcloth and ashes, whips, the sacrifice of a before-dinner martini and empty stomachs that we are here. It was love that put us in this parade. We kneel not as miserable worms but as those brought to their knees by sheer wonder at the gift. It was not to condemn us that our Lord bid us bear his cross, but to save us. We are not here as the lost but as the found.

The cross is heavy and clouds gather, and we shall have more days for honesty, more Sundays to examine our lives again and pray for the courage to be truthful about all, the ways in which we betray so great a love. Lent is not over; “there is still more repenting to be done. But as we turn our steps again” toward Calvary, “let us take these words with us: it was not for condemnation that he was sent to us, but for love. He beckons us on, not to condemn but to save. (Christian Century March 17, 1982, p. 292)

Shall we be born again, be born from above by the wind of the Spirit? Yes, we shall. We shall have faith: we are ready to bet our lives on the Son of God. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Thanks be to God!

"A Christmas Carol" movies you can watch right now, free

I have 18 movie versions of Charles Dickens' novel, A Christmas Carol, in my personal collection. And I watch all of them each Christmas season. Here is where you may find as many versions of the movie as I can find online for free viewing. They are listed in the order I found them, not according to my personal rating of their worth. 

First up, from 1984, starring George C. Scott as Scrooge, free on YouTube and hence embedded here:

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Nest is Scrooged, starring Alistair Sim. This movie has received high marks for Sims' performance as Ebenezer Scrooge.

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Next is is Patrick Stewart playing Scrooge from 1999. This one has become an almost instant classic. 

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This version stars Guy Pearce as a younger Scrooge than we usually imagine. And it is more based on the novel's theme than its narrative, although the character's names are the same. Hence it is a reboot of sorts, rather long (almost three hours) with many added scenes, and Marley's ghost has a much larger part. But I give it good marks for staying faithful to Dickens' themes. 

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Here is the first movie of the novel with sound, 1935's Scrooge, starring Seymour Hicks.

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1938's version, starring Reginald Owen:

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A Christmas Carol (1954), starring Frederic March and Basil Rathbone: 

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Here is An American Christmas Carol from 1979, starring Henry Winkler:

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From 2015, starring Anthony D.P. Mann, one of the shortest versions at 59 minutes:

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From the BBC in 2000, one of my favorite versions, set in modern London with Scrooge being a young hoodlum loan shark, starring Ross Kemp. 

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And last, a musical version starring Albert Finney and Alec Guinness, Scrooge, from 1970.

Have fun, and remember the lesson the story tells so well!

A reflection on Veterans Day

 2 Samuel 23:13‑17:

13 During harvest time, three of the thirty chief men came down to David at the cave of Adullam, while a band of Philistines was encamped in the Valley of Rephaim. 14 At that time David was in the stronghold, and the Philistine garrison was at Bethlehem. 15 David longed for water and said, "Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!" 

16 So the three mighty men broke through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem and carried it back to David. But he refused to drink it; instead, he poured it out before the LORD.

17  "Far be it from me, O LORD, to do this!" he said. "Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?" And David would not drink it. Such were the exploits of the three mighty men.

It is appropriate to honor the veterans of our country. I realize that this may seem a little self-serving since I am a veteran myself, but I hope you will trust me that this isn’t for me. As a Cold Warrior, my service was not especially demanding compared to the men and women who served in the hot wars of Vietnam, Korea, World War Two or the wars since 9/11. They are whom I have in mind.

To honor our veterans is not to glorify war. Certainly, no combat veteran would ever glorify war. After the Civil War, General William T. Sherman became disgusted at the rhetoric of glory being used to describe the war’s campaigns. In a graduation speech at the Michigan Military Academy in 1879, Sherman said, “War is at best barbarism. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell!” 

Despite war’s cruelty, there are many admirable features found among men and women in wartime. The battlefield is a place of many emotions. There is fear and anger. There is resignation and determination. There is hope and despair. The chief emotion at work on the battlefield is an unlikely one. It is love. In the desolation of the battlefield, love abides. Warriors love their country but don't talk about it much. Besides, when flies the angry iron, they fight for their buddies. A soldier who fought in Iraq wrote,

I've found the hard way that war is not glamorous. You quickly lose the idea of being a man fighting for his country when you have to carry your comrade who has been wounded in a gun fight. It's not about fighting for the flag, it's about fighting for my life and fighting for my buddies’ lives. These men I am lucky enough to serve with, I have become so attached to it's like they are my brothers.

A Marine major in Iraq wrote of a young corporal, a squad leader, who, during the invasion of Iraq was wounded by an enemy grenade. This Marine refused evacuation and continued to guide his squad until he passed out from loss of blood. 

Recovering at a hospital in Germany, he convinced his doctors to release him, “borrowed” a camouflage uniform from a Navy corpsman, called his wife and told her that he wasn’t coming home because his Marines were depending on him, and then talked his way onto an Air Force transport back to Iraq. He had the “golden ticket.” He was headed home as a war hero with medals to prove it, but he just couldn’t bear to let his Marines down, so he schemed and connived and got himself back into the fight. There are those who will call that kind of response foolish. Then may God grant that I be such a fool. You may question the wisdom of that Marine, but he’s the kind of man you want on your side when the chips are down.

For a couple of years after 9/11 I tried to go back onto active duty as a chaplain. But for arcane reasons I don't fully understand, it was literally against the law for me to re-enter the service as other than an artillery officer. When our forces moved into Iraq in March 2003, I actually felt ashamed I was not with them. I know that is unreasonable, and that other men and women superbly carried the torch I passed on to them. But I still think I should have been there. 

Jesus said there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends. It is a love known well by veterans. Many veterans still grieve for buddies long dead. I knew well a very elderly gentleman who was a stretcher bearer in World War II. He still has bad dreams of wounded men dying as he is carrying them to an aid station.

During seminary I read of a World War I veteran named Cadet Shirer. He was a medic assigned to a U.S. hospital caring for wounded soldiers in France. “One case I never forgot,” he said.

When me and the nurse passed him, he’d say, ‘Sister, can’t you help me?’ He was burnt, blinded in both eyes. . . . He’d had chlorine gas. The nurse said, ‘Take care of this man, he’s going to die.’ I worked with him and I worked with him. I think his suffering controlled my whole life. Later I picked up Stars and Stripes and learned he didn’t die. Was I happy! His name was Stanislaus Nagursky. Would you believe a man could take so much interest in another man that he’d remember a name like that for 79 years? I still see him in my sleep at times. I still see him in my sleep.

Mingled with grief for friends who died there is sometimes a feeling of guilt at being alive. The battlefield is not an equal-opportunity destroyer. It often seems entirely fickle. An artillery shell explodes overhead and all around you are struck down, but you suffer not even a scratch. You see a plane hit by antiaircraft fire and fold up in flames just ahead, but your plane escapes. James Jones, wounded at Guadalcanal and author of the classic World War Two novel, The Thin Red Line, wrote that the greatest psychological problem among combat troops was not the threat of death but the shock of remaining alive. Some veterans also carry with them the particular burden of having killed other human beings, which war permits but somehow does not justify.

Second Samuel relates that David was thirsty and homesick and didn’t watch his mouth. David said, "Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!" Three of his veteran campaigners overheard him and took great risks in enemy territory to bring back water from Bethlehem to David. But David poured it on the ground, refusing to drink it. "Far be it from me, O Lord, to do this!" he said. "Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?" And David would not drink it.

Americans are free because of the risks of mighty ones who brought them the cup of freedom at great risk. Do we drink from the cup without considering it was bought with the blood of many who gave or risked their lives for it? Far be it from us, O Lord, to do such a thing!

Probably every veteran has experienced a moment when the imponderable awfulness of what soldiers do makes them stop and give cry to the deepest-rooted hope for a better world, populated with better people. Soldiers pray for God to come near when the fog of battle closes in. They see only dimly that out of blood and death there can come a brotherly world. They are alert for signs that the kingdom of God could break in even among ruins and horror.

And the kingdom does break in, without regard to nation or cause. On the morning of June 6, 1944, Franz Mueller, a German soldier, and six of his comrades found themselves in the middle of a division of American paratroopers. They stumbled across two American soldiers attending to a third, who was dying from wounds. Franz spoke English and he told the Americans he was taking them prisoner. But the dying American couldn’t be moved so everyone sat down and waited for him to die. 

Shortly, the two American soldiers knelt beside their friend and began to pray the Lord’s Prayer. After a moment, Franz knelt and joined in. Another German soldier who spoke English joined in, too. The other five Germans didn’t speak English, but they recognized the rhythm of the prayer, so they prayed in German. For this small moment in the midst of war, God’s kingdom broke in: nine soldiers of two enemy armies, suspending their politics and nationality, praying together—four in English, five in German.

Ernest Gordon was a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp. He wrote of a train trip he and his fellows made while in the hands of the Japanese. At a stop in Burma, a train of Japanese wounded pulled alongside.

“They were in a shocking state,” Gordon related. “I have never seen men filthier. Uniforms were encrusted with blood, mud and excrement. Their wounds crawled with maggots. The wounded looked at us forlornly as they sat waiting for death. They had been discarded as expendable, the refuse of war. These were our enemy."

Without a word most of the officers in my section unbuckled their packs, took out part of their rations and a rag or two, and with their water canteens in their hands, went over to the Japanese train. Our guards tried to prevent us, but we ignored them and knelt down by the enemy to give water and food, to clean and bind their wounds. Grateful cries of "Arigato" (thank you) followed us when we left.

I regarded my comrades with wonder. Eighteen months ago they would have readily destroyed [the Japanese]. Now these same officers were dressing the enemy’s wounds.

We had experienced a moment of grace, there in the bloodstained railway cars. God had broken through the barriers of our prejudice and had given us the will to obey his command, "Thou shalt love."

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting our sins against us. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19). This is the hope and faith we have in Christ when faced with the mournful mutter of the battlefield: that in Christ we can be reconciled with each other and with all peoples.

We all have a personal vision of heaven. Here is mine. When the end of the age has come and Christ has put everything under his feet, the dead shall be raised. And all of us who have borne arms and weapons, whether American, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Panamanian, Afghan or Iraqi, we will all meet again. We will not meet in battle, but at the foot of the Prince of Peace. 

Cadet Shirer will find Stanislaus Nagursky and they will have a wonderful reunion. My father-in-law will embrace the men who died on his stretcher and will no longer have to grieve for them. The men who died in the next foxhole or airplane will greet us, smiling. 

And we will find the people whom we have shot or stabbed or clubbed or bombed. We will see them face to face and we will say, “In Christ’s name, forgive me!” And they will reply with elation, “In the name of Christ, you are forgiven!”

That day has not yet come. Let us pray it comes quickly. Until then may the Lord watch over those who are serving now, to make them instruments of justice, enablers of peace, and finally to see them safely home.

Why you matter

Do you matter? And if so, why? I read a physicist’s answer to that question once. He said that when the universe formed 14 billion years ago, matter and antimatter collided and burst into energy, then reformed into matter and antimatter and then did it all over again until, for reasons yet unknown, there was no more antimatter. The universe, he said, is made up of all the matter that was left over after all the antimatter had been destroyed. The difference in amounts between matter and antimatter was no more than one percent.

You matter, he said, because you are matter.

Well, maybe, but I doubt that answer is very consoling in the dark of the night. Here is a story, a parable if you will, of one evening on a Chicago commuter train.

It was about 10 o’clock one weeknight when three young tough guys, full of swagger and threat, boarded a car. There were not many riders aboard at that hour – a young woman clutching a grocery sack, a tired-looking, middle-aged laborer leaning against a support bar, not even looking up, a few others. As a leopard sees which gazelles are weak, the young punks scanned the car for prey.

 

They saw an older man, maybe 70 or so, in a gray coat and tie, not Brooks Brothers but not off the Goodwill rack, either. He was seated in the next section, reading a folded newspaper. And so, laughing loudly and shuffling noisily, the punks approached. The leader stood before the suited man and punched his newspaper.

“Hey man!” he yelled. “You’re sitting in my seat!”

When the man looked up, the young punkster was somewhat surprised that his face and eyes registered alert awareness, but not fear. So the punkster glared at him more threateningly.

The gray man spoke. “Well, I’d better move, then.” He pulled his paper back, folded it with care, placed it under his arms, and stood. “Pardon me,” he said kindly to the punk leader, and placing the back of his right hand gently on the young man’s sleeve, he pressed lightly to the side and stepped across the car. There he turned and sat, unfolded his paper, looked at the punkster, smiled slightly and said, “Please, have your seat.” Then he set his eyes on the newsprint and said no more.

The young punk stood there for a moment, slightly shrugged and sat down. The two gangster sidekicks with him sat on either side. “Well, what a bunch of losers we wound up with tonight!” said one, much too loudly and to no visible effect on the dozen people in the car. Then he stared at the gray man for a long moment. “And I think you’re the biggest loser of all.”

The gray man returned the gaze and shortly simply said, “Very well.” Then he began reading again.

The punk leader leaned forward. “Hey man, I’ll give you a real reason to be afraid!” Several people nearby glanced nervously. “You hear me?”

The gray man folded his paper into his lap. “No,” he said, “you may give me a reason to be concerned. But not a reason to be afraid.” Then the gray man did the most unexpected thing. He stood, stepped to stand in front of the sidekick and said, “Excuse me, but I’d like to sit there for a moment.” The sidekick snorted, “Man, stuff you!” or something like that, which evoked a comment from the gray man to the punk leader, “Would you mind, only for a moment?”

“Shee,” the punkster said. “I ain’t afraid of you.” To the sidekick he said, “Get up.” Wordlessly, the glaring young man arose and the gray man sat. “Well?” said the punkster. “I ain’t got all night.”

Looking directly at the punkster, the gray man said, “I am no match for you and I know it. If you want to wipe up the floor with me I can’t stop you. But you don’t know what to about me because you live with fear and I don’t.”

“What you mean?” came the answer. “I said I ain’t afraid of you! You talking stuff, that’s all, old man.”

“I know you are not afraid me of me, nor should you be. You are not afraid of anything inside this car. But I didn’t say you were afraid. I said you are full of fear. Not of anything in here. You fear what’s out there.” He waved his hand toward the darkness outside.

“Oh, yeah?” the punk retorted. “What do you think is out there that I am so afraid of?”

“Nothing,” the gray man said simply. “That nothing is all there is. That when you have finished walking down the path of life, there will not remain even a footprint to show your passing.” The punkster stared at the gray man, working his jaw, his eyes flashing. The gray man continued. “Nothing fills your soul because nothing matters. And that is your fear – buried so deep inside you that you hardly know it’s there, the fear that you don’t matter, either, not at all.”

It is the unique invention of Judaism, passed on to Christianity, that individual human beings matter personally to God. No other religion in the world teaches that.

One might think that Islam says that Allah cares for and about human beings just as Judaism and Christianity say, but no, not even close. A Muslim author wrote, for example, “The Quran states that Allah is as ‘near to man as the jugular vein’” but this is not an assurance of comfort but of threat. In Islam, Allah remains unknown, unrevealed by the Quran, which consists of admonishments and commands but says almost nothing about Allah himself. Allah is entirely separate and unconnected to human affairs except through the giving of strict laws. Allah remains a mystery; he does not make personal, self-revealing approaches to mortals nor seek fellowship with them. Muslim jurist Samuel Solomon wrote that Islam is not a personal religion at all. Islam claims no knowledge of a self-revealing and self-bestowing of God.[1]Allah commands, Allah judges, but the Quran says Allah loves only those who obey him and explicitly says he does not love non-Muslims.[2]Allah demands not human love but submission, willing or unwilling, either will do. As one Muslim author states, “We can know nothing about the nature of God except through [his] commands … .”[3]

In none of the Eastern religions is there the notion that individuals matter in any transcendent way.  The present life is viewed as a curse from which escape is desirable but almost impossible to achieve. Nirvana, for example, is “achieved by the extinction of desire and of individual consciousness,” to escape the cycle of life, death and reincarnation. If escape is achieved, all personal identity is lost and one’s soul merges with universal consciousness. But the gods, for the eastern religions that have them, do not care whether you achieve this, nor do they interact with human beings.

All the rest of the world’s religions are varieties of nature religions with hundreds of variants from Wicca to Voodoo in which the idea of a personal deity for whom individual persons matter is not included.

Outside of Judaism, in the ancient world of Jesus’ day the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses reigned supreme except for vestiges of Babylonian and Persian religions. However, in all of them the god's interacted with humanity in unpredictable, often capricious ways. Mortals were tools of the gods to achieve their own ends when the gods bothered to notice mortals at all. The gods were not moral exemplars whose characters were spotless and pure. Murder, incest and rape were all attributed to the Greek gods, whose main attributes were power and immortality, not goodness. As for the ancient Greeks, as Tina Turner would later sing, “What’s love got to do with it?” A pupil of Aristotle wrote: "It would be eccentric for anyone to claim that he loved Zeus."[4]

Alone against all these religions of the pointlessness of human life stood Judaism and its daughter Christianity. Alone they made divine love for individual human beings the centerpiece of belief. This love, though, is not the mushy, vapid sentimentalism that our pop culture sings about. The love of God for us, and our love for God in return, is instead a steadfast, bi-directional loyalty in covenant relationship. It is commitment, conviction and enduring trust that no matter what, this committed loyalty will never weaken. Isaiah explained it in God's words in chapter 46:

I will be your God throughout your lifetime—

    until your hair is white with age.

I made you, and I will care for you.

    I will carry you along and save you.

Jesus explained it this way in the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 10:29-31

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Jesus told a story about a man who had two sons. One day the younger son demanded his inheritance immediately. The father gave it to him and the young man moved far away, where he promptly wasted all his fortune on "riotous living."

Then he started back home, broke and hungry, determined to beg his father to accept him as a hired hand on the farm.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate! For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.

The father is God, of course, and the son is you and me and anyone else we think doesn’t matter. The story is especially for every person like the Chicago punkster who fears he doesn’t matter. Paul Harvey related one day what actually happened in Spain some years ago. A man and his son, Pablo, had a bitter falling out. Pablo packed and left, vowing never to come back. For five years the father never heard from his son. The ache and regret and self-reproach was more than he could bear. Then one day a friend told him that he was sure he had seen Pablo in Madrid one day in a market.

The father took a train to Madrid and went straight to the newspaper office. There, he bought a full-page ad that said simply, "Pablo, I love you with all my heart. I forgive everything and beg you forgive me. Meet me Friday in front of the main library at 9 a.m. Love, your father."

Friday morning the father walked to the library with heart pounding. His son was waiting for him there, along with seventeen other young men, all named Pablo.

Yet these stories, as near the heart of the why we each matter to God as they are, only illustrate rather than define why you and I matter. At the center are not heart-warming stories but the bloody horror of the cross. That we matter to God is a guarantee sealed literally in blood. “For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,” and no longer counts our sins against us.[5]And since it took crucifixion to do that, then Jesus endured the cross.

If you were the only sinner in the world, the only one ever, Jesus would still have carried that cross to Golgotha and died upon it, just for you alone.

That is why you matter.

---

[1]http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Spencer/God/chap2.htm

[2]http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Themes/love.htm

[3]Ibid

[4]http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Gods&men.htm

[5]2 Corinthians 5:19

Paganism is coming back strong

 These are four long-ish essays that deserve careful reading because, though not collaborative products, they all interrelate remarkably. I wish I had the time to excerpt them and comment. So for now, at least, the list:

Generation Z and the Future of Faith in America

From Commentary: The Return of Paganism - The spiritual crisis afflicting contemporary America has ancient and enduring roots—and so does the cure. Key point: As explained in the article, pagan practices ultimately always result in human sacrifice, especially of children.

The Queers Versus The Homosexuals - We are in a new era. And the erasure of gay men and lesbians is intensifying. (Yes, it is relevant to both links above)

Rape of the Locke - Western liberalism is being replaced. What comes next is illiberal to its core.

The Good Samaritan and Problem of Evil

Gustave Dore, The Good Samaritan

One of the greatest obstacles of inviting people to Christian faith is the problem of evil in the world. Some people cannot reconcile an all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful God with the violence our own planet wreaks upon itself and humankind. Yet the tornados, hurricanes, and earthquakes that lay waste to cities and destroy lives usually don't present nearly the challenge to faith presented by the evil men and women do to one another.

Those who find the problem of evil a major challenge to faith are right to take the issue so seriously. The longest book of the Bible, Job, is entirely concerned with nothing else. Human evil is a prominent theme of Jonah, one of the shortest books. An enormous amount of Jesus' teachings and deeds were oriented on good and evil, and Jesus' own people, the Jews, were formed by hundreds of years in chattel slavery in Egypt, finally delivered by God's hand. 

Jesus told a parable of a farmer who sowed good seed in his field, but an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. By the time the farmer knew his field had been polluted, tearing up the weeds would have torn up the wheat as well. He told his workers, to let them grow together until the harvest; then at harvest to collect the weeds first and burn them but store the wheat in the barn. 

Jesus never explained why evil exists. The weeds were planted by an enemy, whom Jesus explained to his disciples was the devil, but he does not explain why there is a devil in the first place. He teaches that the time will come when God will separate evil from good, and evil-doers from the righteous. That time is not yet. Grain isn’t harvested until it is ripe, and the parable seems to teach that for God to destroy evil now would do more harm than good. We might wish for fire from heaven to take care of certain matters, but God, wise beyond our understanding, knows better. 

But time for weeds does eventually run out. At harvest the reapers saved the wheat and burned the weeds. So, wrote Peter, “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives” (2 Pet 3:11). 

That’s the rub, isn’t it? Each person must decide whether he or she is wheat or weeds. Jesus pulled no punches on what difference it makes. In Matthew 7, Jesus said, "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt 7:19-20). 

We each must decide to be wheat, not weeds. It does not happen by accident; and the default is weeds. And weeds get burned. This is a hard teaching, no two ways about it. But there it is. But Jesus didn’t end the parable there. The good part is the tag line: “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” 

God is much more oriented on saving the righteous than destroying the evil. It’s more important for the wheat to grow than the weeds to perish. Peter wrote in his second epistle, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9 NIV). 

Vladimir Lenin said it was better to execute 100 innocent men than to let one guilty man go free. Lenin did what he said, of course, and we can easily imagine him ripping up 100 stalks of wheat to get one weed. God doesn’t work like that. Instead, God knows that goodness is more powerful than evil, and love is more powerful than hate. Transforming weeds to wheat is something God can do. 

But change is not always something we embrace easily. Some people change when they see the light and others wait until they feel the heat. The light is better. 

Jesus didn't simply make threats or promises about the end of evil. He both showed and taught what Paul later called "a more excellent way." That’s how Jesus lived his life: befriending sinners, hanging out with hated tax collectors and other discards of society. In agriculture weeds stay weeds, no matter what, but human beings can change. There were two weedy men, thieves, nailed to crosses beside Jesus. Yet one went to paradise that day.

One day Jesus was conversing with a religious lawyer. The lawyer said to Jesus, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 

Jesus answered, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" 

The lawyer said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." 

Jesus told him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." 

But the lawyer wanted to make himself look good, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" 

Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

"But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' "Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" 

The lawyer said, "The one who showed him mercy." 

Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise" (Luke 10:25‑37).

The great English statesman Edmund Burke observed that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. In this story, a priest and a Levite did do nothing, surely because of excellent reasons in their own mind. But the Samaritan didn't do nothing. He gave first aid to the beaten traveler, carried him to an inn and paid for his lodging. Because of him, the evil done to the traveler, while real, did not triumph. He did these things even though Samaritans and Jews generally despised each other. 

None of us think of ourselves as evil men or women. Yet do we have the right to think of ourselves as good? So many of us define our goodness by what we do not do - we don't do drugs, we don't steal from our employers, we don't fight with our neighbors. But do we define our neighbors as inclusively as Jesus did? 

The Samaritan showed mercy to the beaten Jew. Why do persons such as this Samaritan exist? There are ordinary people of our communities who live decent but mostly unremarkable lives, but there are also men or women who remind us of the Samaritan, who even shame us by their example. Christ's commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves is not uniquely Christian. But it is especially for Christians. Why do we not have a whole town of Christian Samaritans? After all, we see in the world that there not only Osama bin Ladens, but also Mother Teresas. 

And there are people like “Dr. David Baum, a long-time obstetrician in Highland Park,” Illinois, who last Monday,

Dr. Baum

… was attending the parade with his wife and children to watch his two-year-old grandson participate. When the shots rang out and others fled, he ran into the fray to try to help the victims. … 

Baum said there were at least three doctors, a nurse, and a nurse practitioner who joined him in treating victims.   …

In fact, “bystanders tied tourniquets and administered CPR” and 

... people from every corner of the Highland Park community sprang into action on July 4 in the wake of unspeakable tragedy. Nearly a dozen people, including off-duty doctors, nurses, and a football coach, were among the first to administer lifesaving assistance to victims of the parade shooting. 

I believe that there are more good Samaritans than are known. Samaritan-hood takes many forms today and the vast majority get no headlines. 

Perhaps such inquiries help form an answer to the faith problem of evil, for if there is a problem of evil, there is also a problem of good. If the existence of sin and evil hinder faith in a loving, redemptive God, then shouldn’t the daily instances of goodness and mercy we see around us compel us to know that a loving, redemptive God is real and in the world? 

So to persons who feel stymied in faith by the problem of evil, I say to remember that all of us are active actors in, not passive observers of, this world and the opportunities it presents for both good and evil. The psalmist's cry to God is less a plea to him than a recognition of our duties before him: "Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” 

That’s our job, for we are the answer to that prayer. The prophet Micah put it this way: "[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" 

The problem of evil is not a problem to be solved, it is a condition to be overcome. God is working in the world both to overcome evil and redeem it, and God does not labor alone. Each one of us is called to be a coworker of God. The Bible nowhere divorces love of neighbor from love for God. They are two sides of the same coin. To be righteous before God requires both; to prevail against evil requires both. 

How shall evil be overcome? Each of us shall open our hearts to God, be filled with Christ, accept the pardon given us. And by opening our hands to our neighbors, so that they may see Christ reflected from us. J. Gresham Machen wrote in 1923, 

 If we really love our fellow men, we shall never be content with [simply] binding up their wounds and pouring on oil and wine or rendering them any such lesser service. We shall indeed do such things for them. But the main business of our lives will be to bring them to the Saviour of their souls. (Christianity and Liberalism)

End note: In 2017, a man named Stephen Paddock shot hundreds of people. killing dozens, in La Vegas. Read what might God have said about that. 

What is worth dying for?

What is worth dying for? Since World War II, the United States has fought thirteen wars of varying intensity and lethality. They ranged from the Korean War and Vietnam to the rescue operation of the vessel Mayaguez during the Ford administration. During my own years of Army service, we invaded Grenada, Panama, Somalia, and sent Marines to Beirut, where hundreds of them died. We also fought our first war with Iraq. I need not remind anyone of the post-9/11 conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The movie Glory tells the story of the 54th Massachusetts infantry. The 54th was the first all-black regiment of the Civil War. In July 1863, the 54th Massachusetts was cited for bravery after a pitched battle on James Island, South Carolina. At dusk the next day the regiment carried out an attack against Fort Wagner, which guarded Charleston harbor. Almost half the regiment’s 600 men were killed, wounded or taken prisoner.

Soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry of the Civil War

The 54th was reconstituted and later distinguished itself in other battles in Georgia and South Carolina. They knew the stakes for them were higher than for white soldiers: if captured, they would be either summarily executed or enslaved by the South, including black soldiers born freemen in the North. Even so, by the end of the Civil War more than 175,000 Americans of African descent had volunteered to serve the Union, finally accounting for ten percent of Union forces.

During the United States' incursion into Panama in 1989, I served on the Battle Management Cell of XVIII Airborne Corps. We sent an infantry platoon by helicopter to a bank of the Panama Canal to attack a Panamanian army position blocking access across the canal. The choppers hovered a couple of feet above a dry, level flat in the canal, exposed by low tide. The troops jumped off, only to discover it was not dry, it was mud. Weighed down by sixty or more pounds of equipment, the soldiers sank above their ankles. They were stuck. Panamanian gunners began peppering them with fire, driving the helicopters away. 

Thirty American soldiers might have died like ducks on a pond had not a miracle occurred. Panamanian men and women who lived along the canal saw what was happening. Dozens of them ran out onto the mud flat and formed a chain to the American troops. They took the soldiers’ heavy gear and passed it hand-to-hand to the shore, enabling the troops to clamber to the bank. Some of these brave Panamanian men and women were hit by the gunfire of their own army.

The soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts and the civilian men and women of Panama knew that freedom is worth dying for.

William Manchester won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of President Kennedy. Manchester was a Marine in World War 2 who fought in the battle for Okinawa. In his memoir, Goodbye, Darkness, Manchester wrote, “Among men who fight together there is an intense love.” Wounded, though not badly, Manchester was evacuated to a field hospital, where he later found out his unit was ordered to make another amphibious assault farther up the island. The thought of his friends facing danger without him to help, he said, “was just intolerable... . Those men on the line were my family, my home. They were closer to me than I can say. I had to be with them, rather than let them die and me live with the knowledge that I might have saved them.” He went AWOL from the honorable safety of the field hospital and rejoined his unit. He was horribly wounded by artillery in the ensuing battle. 

Love is worth dying for. 

More than one million, one hundred thousand American men and women have died in battle. I think they would agree with General William T. Sherman that the just aim of war can be only a more just peace. Probably every veteran has experienced a moment when the imponderable awfulness of what soldiers do makes them stop and give cry to a deep-rooted hope for a better world, populated with better people. Soldiers pray for God to come near when the fog of battle closes in. They see only dimly that out of blood and death there might come a brotherly world.

This hope is not forlorn. In October 1999, some American and Japanese veterans of the battle of Pearl Harbor went to Kyushu, where is the port from which the Japanese fleet had sailed to make the attack. The site is now a peace park. These men, once mortal enemies, gathered to plant cherry trees in honor of their reconciliation. Richard Fiske, who survived the sinking of USS West Virginia, said that as the trees grow, they hoped children would understand what the trees and the park represented, “because,” he said, “if we don’t tell our little ones, our future is none. We give ourselves to them. They carry the future.”

That is why we recognize Memorial Day, not to glorify war, but to pray for peace. Peace is worth dying for yet achieving peace has been the most elusive goal in human history.

Freedom, love, and peace form a trinity of remembrance on Memorial Day. Our honored dead lie slain because they loved their country. They sought to preserve our freedom. And they died in the hope of securing a more just peace. Throughout history, human beings have realized that the ultimate goods attainable have tended to require the ultimate sacrifices possible. 

Maybe you can see where I am going with this. The greatest good attainable for creation is its full reconciliation with God. And that is being brought about by the greatest sacrifice possible, that of God’s own self in the person of Jesus Christ. 

I do not wish to sentimentalize American military dead into Christ figures. Yet we are living off the inheritance of those who gave their lives for us, beginning with the 4,435 patriots who died in battle in the Revolutionary War. What can we do with this inheritance now? We will either squander it or work for its perfection. 

It is the same with our inheritance from the sacrifice of Christ. Our inheritance from Christ is citizenship in the Kingdom of God and the promise of eternal life. Each day we fail to be faithful to Christ, we squander our inheritance. Only by doing the continuing work of Christ to bring all God’s people into God’s family, as brothers and sisters in the family of Christ, do we move on to perfection.

That is something worth more than dying for. It is something worth living for: the peace of Christ, the love of God and the freedom of the Gospel of salvation.

In April 1942, Lt. Col. James Doolittle led sixteen small bombers on the first bombing mission against Japan. Jacob DeShazer was a bombardier on the sixteenth plane. They bombed Nagoya and flew on to China, where they were captured by the Japanese. They were tortured mercilessly. They contracted dysentery and beri-beri because of the deplorable conditions under which they were confined. Three of the crew were executed in October.

The other five men suffered a starvation diet, their health rapidly deteriorating. One died. A year later the four survivors began to receive a slight improvement in their treatment. The Japanese gave them a single copy of the Bible, which DeShazer had never read. DeShazer waited six months to have his turn to read it. He read it cover to cover more than a dozen times. DeShazer credited his survival to accepting the Gospel of Jesus Christ from that lone Bible.

In 1948, DeShazer was sent back to Japan to testify in war crimes trials of his captors. He stayed for thirty years, preaching the Gospel around Japan. He established a church in Nagoya, the city he had bombed. 

One man who learned of DeShazer’s witnessing was named Mitsuo Fuchida. Fuchida converted to Christianity in 1949 and met DeShazer the next year. Fuchida became an evangelist, preaching in Japan and all over the world. He lived a few years in the United States before retiring in Japan.

Do you recognize the name, Mitsuo Fuchida? On December 7, 1941, he had commanded the air armada that attacked Pearl Harbor. In 1952, after becoming an evangelist, he said in an interview, “Christianity has opened my eyes, and I hope through Christ to help young people of Japan” to learn to love their former enemy, America. Speaking in 1959 at Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn, he said that after the war he had observed American missionaries in Tokyo feeding the starving and teaching the “ways of Christ.” Such forgiveness, he said, made him want to know more of the Christ “they professed to love.” One of his talks was called “From Pearl Harbor to Calvary – My Testimony.” 

Mitsuo Fuchida and Jacob DeShazer

Mitsuo Fuchida, who had bombed Pearl Harbor, died in 1976. The man who had bombed Nagoya, tortured POW Jacob DeShazer, conducted his funeral in Japan.

Let us pray:

Gracious God, we come before you as part of your global family, thankful for your generous love and abundant blessings. May we honor your holy name by living up to the inheritance of your salvation, as we bear the name of your son, Jesus Christ our savior, with passion for his work of reconciliation of all the world. 

May your vision of peace and justice be realized and enacted among nations finally at rest from war, among families at peace with each other, and hearts that find their rest in you. Lead us to that day when every tear is dried, every life is fulfilled and the law of love is written on our hearts.

We thank you, Lord, for the lives of all those whose sacrifices have made our freedom possible. We beg your grace for our country and your wisdom to guide each of our citizens. Let us not squander the freedom we have been given by those who died to preserve it. 

Remove from human beings the arrogance of power, our trust in anger, our reliance on weapons, and our love of violence. Chasten us with humility and strengthen our trust in you. Make us agents of your peace in all places. Amen.