What has Jesus ever done for us?

On Aug. 21, I was privileged to have been invited to preach at Sango UMC, Clarksville, Tenn., on the occasion of their homecoming Sunday and celebration of the church's 122nd anniversary of its founding.

This is the video of my sermon; the whole service's video is on Sango's Facebook page. As I explain at the beginning, I ripped the title of the sermon off from a skit by Monty Python about Jews in ancient Judea, under Roman rule and occupation, discussing, "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

And so, "What has Jesus ever done for us?"

The prepared text: 

Luke 9 presents a series of vignettes about Jesus as he makes his way with his disciples to Jerusalem, where he will be crucified. One of the vignettes is from verses 46 to 48:

An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. 47 Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. 48 Then he said to them, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.”

Consider that brief statement in v 46: "An argument started among the disciples as to which one of them would be the greatest."

Even at this late date, the disciples thought of Jesus and their discipleship in earthly ways. They thought that Jesus would arrive in Jerusalem and depose the Roman vassal, Herod Antipas, from the throne of Judea, then take the crown himself. He could claim it, being in the line of descent from King David. And the disciples knew that Jesus had a very large following, not an army but large enough to be turned into a formidable mob. In fact, when the Roman governor Pilate later interrogated Jesus, he expressed surprise that none of his followers were fighting in the streets to free him, prompting Jesus to reply, "My kingdom is not of this world."

So, the disciples argued on the Jerusalem road, basically, about which offices Jesus would appoint them to once he took power. Who would be the secretary of state? Treasurer? Chief of staff? Secretary of commerce?

"But Jesus, aware of their inner thoughts," put a stop to such foolish chatter. Then there is this stark sentence, verse 51: “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”

John Piper wrote,

To set his face towards Jerusalem meant something very different for Jesus than it did for the disciples. ... Jerusalem meant one thing for Jesus: certain death. Nor was he under any illusions of a quick and heroic death. He predicted in Luke 18:31, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written of the Son of man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon; they will scourge him and kill him." When Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, he set his face to die. ...

If we look at Jesus' death merely because of a betrayer's deceit and the Sanhedrin's fear and Pilate's spinelessness and the soldiers' nails and spear, Jesus’ death might seem very involuntary. And the benefit of salvation that comes to us who believe from this death might be viewed as God's way of making a virtue out of a necessity. But once you read Luke 9:51 all such thoughts vanish. Jesus was not accidentally entangled in a web of injustice. The saving benefits of his death for sinners were not an afterthought. God intended it all out of infinite love of sinners like us and appointed a time. Jesus, who was the very embodiment of his Father's love for sinners, saw that the time had come, so he set his face to fulfill his mission: to die in Jerusalem for our sake. "No one takes my life from me,” he said, “but I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:18).

But all the disciples could talk about was, "What will Jesus do for us?"

Nowadays we call this a "consumerist" approach to following Jesus. Here is where the disciples went off course:

·        They placed their own welfare and desires at the top,

·        Their primary frame of reference was the organization,

·        They saw themselves in competition with each other, and,

·        They wanted personal benefits.

Of the four faults I have listed, the second is the most fatal and the most relevant for 21st-century Christians. We have a strong tendency to think of ourselves as organization people. Our primary frame of reference is the Church, while the New Testament is clear that it should be the risen Christ. Ideally, there would not be a tissue-paper's width of difference between the two, but we have never achieved that ideal though we must keep trying.

How much we fall into the disciples' consumerist error is illustrated by two simple words: "church shopping." Just Google those two words and see what comes up. The problem with church shopping is not that people are looking for a church, which is a great thing. It is that church “shopping” puts the church as the primary frame of reference rather than the Lord. As retired pastor Gordon Anderson put it,

The danger for those of us who are looking for a spiritual community is that we might slip into a consumer mentality. You can tell this has happened when you sound like a movie critic at lunch on Sunday afternoon.
 

“I don’t know, the sermon kind of bothered me. I didn’t like the sound of his voice. How about that solo? Yikes, someone was off key. Also, what’s up with [using an offering collection station instead of passing the plate?] And anyway, I’m not sure they have the kind of youth program we’re looking for.”

A church consumer is focused on things like,

·        How large is your children's or youth program?

·        Is there a Sunday School for my age group?

·        What kind of music program is there?

·        Is there a VBS?

And other questions or statements with a similar outlook.

I want to be clear: All those things are important, and churches neglect them to their peril. But they are not of primary importance. A church’s organization and programs are not more important than the Christ who is our only reason for being.

Author Bill Muehlenberg put it this way:[1]

The fact is that while we may be able to market the church, we cannot market Christ, the gospel, Christian character, or meaning in life. The church can offer handy childcare to weary parents, intellectual stimulation to the restless video generation, a feeling of family to the lonely and dispossessed – and, indeed, lots of people come to churches for these reasons. But neither Christ nor his truth can be marketed by appealing to consumer interest, because the premise of all marketing is that the consumer’s need is sovereign, that the customer is always right, and this is precisely what the gospel insists cannot be the case.

To anyone who may be church shopping, I pray God will guide you and suggest that you ask these questions of this or any church, its people, and its pastor:

·        Is this a congregation where I can find help in moving on to Christian perfection?

·        Are the people of this church taking dominion over sin and will they help me do the same?

·        Are they being filled with the pure love of God, and may I also be filled here?

·        Is this a congregation centered on Christ? Are these a people for whom Christ is so real that they live all their lives to his glory?

If the answer to those questions is predominantly affirmative, then looking at programs and activities may be a next step. But if the answer is no, then a church’s programs and activities don’t much matter.

Falling into the disciples’ error is before us and every church daily. So, let us pray that we remain focused not on what has Jesus ever done for us, but how we may grow together in holiness to serve the Lord and his kingdom no matter the benefits or costs to ourselves.

The disciples became apostles through Christ’s resurrection and his commandment to go into the world to proclaim the Good News. They learned their lessons superbly well. Never in their letters or epistles do we read any hint of consumerist Christianity. In fact, all but John were martyred for their faith, and John died in exile. Among the apostles, "What has Jesus ever done for us?" is never asked in anticipation, but with thanksgiving, as in Ephesians chapter 1:

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will ... 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us. ...

11 In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.

This is the Spirit that should live within all of us and should be the main attraction to people seeking a congregational home. We can market our church but must not. We cannot market Christ; we can only give witness to our redemption through him and his forgiveness of our sins. And that is where we find what unites Christian people together as brothers and sisters with Christ and adopted children of God. We are not united by the bumper stickers we place on our cars, not by the political causes we support or oppose, not by our careers or credentials. We are united by loving God and one another and living according to the mystery of our faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

What has Jesus ever done for us? More than we can ever imagine. Perhaps we also should set our face toward Jerusalem, determined to stay faithful to the call of Christ no matter the cost, understanding what the apostles did: It’s not about us.

Let us then ask the Lord to strengthen in us and all Christians faith in Christ, the Savior of the world. Please join me in our Litany for Christian Unity, number 556 in your hymnal:

Let us ask the Lord to strengthen in all Christians' faith in Christ, the Savior of the world.

Listen to us, O Lord.

Let us ask the Lord to sustain and guide Christians with his gifts along the way to full unity.

Listen to us, O Lord.

Let us ask the Lord for the gift of unity and peace for the world.

Listen to us, O Lord.

Let us pray together:

We ask you, O Lord, for the gifts of your Spirit.

   Enable us to penetrate the depth of the whole truth,

       and grant that we may share with others

            the goods you have put at our disposal.

Teach us to overcome divisions. Send us your Spirit

   to lead to full unity your sons and daughters in full charity,

       in obedience to your will; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

"May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God." 

Romans 15.5-7:

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[1] https://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/03/28/the-consumerist-market-orientated-church/

 

Prayer and suffering, Luke 18:1‑8

Luke 22:39; 41-42 – Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. 41 He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, 42 "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."

Here is a meditation on this passage by author Amanda Witt.

   Listen to the phrasing of our prayers: Please heal her – but if not, then your will be done. Please give me a job – but if not, your will be done. Please bring home my lost child – but if not, your will be done.

   We are praying humbly. We are saying that we know that God knows better than we do. But many times our phrasing seems to imply that God's will is always the bad thing – malignancy, poverty, bereavement. We speak as if we think God wants to hurt us, and if we're lucky he'll give us our way and not wreak his terrible will on us.

"Too often," wrote Thomas Merton, "the conventional conception of ‘God's will’ as a sphinx‑like and arbitrary force bearing down upon us with implacable hostility, leads people to lose faith in a God they cannot find it possible to love.”

That is the center of the problem of prayer and suffering. Merton continued, “We must learn to realize that the love of God seeks us in every situation and seeks our good. His inscrutable love seeks our awakening ....

 When we understand ... we will learn to take the risks implied by faith, to make the choices that deliver us from our routine self and open to us the door of a new being, a new reality.

When Christ prayed in the garden of Gethsemane to be spared the agony of the cross and concluded, 'Yet not my will, but yours,' it turned out that God's will was indeed terrible to behold. Sometimes it will be so in our own lives. Yet even in such circumstances we must remember, as Christ surely remembered, that we pray for God's will to be done because His will is the best, most wonderful thing that could happen to us, even if it is also the most terrible thing we can imagine (Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation).

Let us pray:

Great and holy God, creator of the universe and author of every good work, we praise you for giving us the gift of prayer, that we may approach you confidently. Let us pray from our minds, Lord, that our thoughts may be true and holy. Let us pray from our hearts, Lord, that our souls may be filled with love. Let us pray without ceasing, Lord, that when you come again, you will find faith on the earth. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Are you familiar with the story of the persistent widow? She was an elderly, United Methodist woman whom we’ll call Matilda. She was not able to do all the maintenance that her house needed over time, so she asked her church’s lay leader to arrange for some men of the church to come over and help her out. Time went by and no men came by, so she asked again with no result. Finally, she started calling him on the phone at various times of the day or evening, ignoring his pleas to leave him alone. At last, he could not take it anymore and just to get her to be quiet he persuaded several men to go to her house one Saturday.

They did do a lot of work. The cleaned out her gutters and cut dead branches off some trees. They repainted some places inside and out and weeded her garden. They edged her sidewalks and sprayed grass killer on her driveway and replaced burned out eave lights, and much more.

The next day Matilda was not in church. And the week after that she was not there. When she was absent on the third Sunday the lay leader asked Matilda’s best friend if Matilda was all right.

“Oh, she’s fine,” came the reply. “But she told me that ya’ll made her house look so upscale that she decided to join the Episcopal church.”

Well, that’s one story of a persistent widow. Jesus told one, too.

Luke 18:1‑8

1 And he told them a parable to illustrate that they ought always to pray without giving up. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who had no regard for God or the opinions of others. 3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice in my lawsuit.’ 4 For a while he brushed her off, but finally he said to himself, ‘Though I don’t care what God or other people think, this widow keeps bothering me. So I will rule in her favor so she will quit pestering me to death.”

6 And the Lord said, “If even that sinful judge says that, 7 don’t you think that God will give justice to his people, who call to him all the time? Do you think he will drag his feet over their prayers? 8 I tell you, he will give justice to them right away! Even so, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

In this passage Jesus is not comparing God to the unjust judge. He is contrasting God with the judge. The widow had to pester the judge for a long time before she finally wore him down, but Jesus says that God does not drag his feet over our prayers.

I have corresponded for about 20 years with a writer named Gerard Vanderleun who once wrote an essay why prayers are answered -- or aren’t, as the case may be. The main thrust of Gerard's essay concerns God's workload. "He's one God who is running a very big universe," wrote Gerard. 

Perhaps He's got the whole thing franchised and He's running thousands of universes in a host of different dimensions, all with local variations to the main menu. We don't know. We can't know. But if you grant even one universe to this one God, you've got to admit this would be a very busy Supreme Being. Even being omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient, You'd still have an In Box beyond the human mind's capacity for bogglement. ...

The final upshot is that, even if God just steps away from his desk for a quick trip to heaven's free beverage machine, when He gets back, he's confronted with at least 4,675,839 prayers presented as pink ‘While You Were Out Slips.’

I submit that even the most omnipotent God cannot deal with incoming requests at this rate. ...

To me this is the most obvious reason that some prayers are answered while most are not. It's simply a question of time and resources, even for God.

Does it really happen this way? I will readily grant that prayers come to God at a rate that we can but poorly imagine – Gerard mentions a scene in the movie Bruce Almighty where Bruce, an ordinary man to whom God gives his divine power for a weekend, is so overwhelmed monitoring the prayer board that he freaks out and hits the "yes to all" button, which causes no end of turmoil in the world because the millions of prayers include requests for unholy things or vast contradictions among them. 

It will not do to hide behind the old cliché that "God does answer every prayer, it's just that often the answer is no." That's not what Gerard is getting at. He is addressing why so many prayers apparently get no answer at all. They are, as far as mere humans can tell, simply ignored. Why?

 That prayers come too fast, too many even for God to handle is a reason I cannot accept. Here's why. The eleventh-century English theologian Anselm of Canterbury defined God simply as “that than which no greater can be conceived." This insight has stood the test of time quite well. After all, if there is a Supreme Being, then that being must be, well, Supreme. There can be no greater.

So if God, the Creator of the universe, is unable to keep up with the workload of managing it, then I would not say that God is doing the best he can. I would say that the entity so described is not God.

Why are so many prayers apparently unanswered? "Apparently" is a sort of dodge, of course, because most of us understand that some prayers get answered in ways we may not recognize. God is not always obvious in his works. Answers to prayers are often subtle.

But that understanding can't be used every time. There are tragedies or suffering that can force us to confront a core issue of faith: if God seems not to heed prayers of the most crucial kind, then exactly why should we believe the Scriptures, which say that we can approach God with confidence? How could Jesus have claimed that God responds quickly to our prayers?

Of course, we do not ask such questions outside of the tragic. No one who gets a promotion and raise at work sees it as evidence of God' absence and then decides to throw Jesus under the bus.

It is in suffering that we tend to see God as inscrutable or indifferent when our prayers seem to be ignored. How often have I heard platitudes such as, "God does not put on us more than we can bear," which is nowhere taught in the Bible, or, "God must have some reason for this," which presents God as a sphinxlike, arbitrary force bearing down upon us with implacable hostility, as Merton said. Do we really think we are pawns pushed around by incomprehensible, divine capriciousness?

Jesus had little patience with the idea that God snuffs out people arbitrarily or even as punishment. In Luke 13 Jesus commented on two recent tragedies. One was that Pontius Pilate had ordered the slaughter of some Galileans who were making their sacrifices. Then there was a building that collapsed and killed eighteen people. Do you think they were worse sinners or guiltier than everyone else? Jesus asked. He answered, “I tell you, no... .”

If tragedy is God’s punishment for sin, the obvious question is, Where would God stop? With the righteous? Jesus refuted the idea that the righteous will not suffer; in fact, he promised it as a consequence of righteousness!

After an Indian ocean tsunamis killed almost a quarter million people in 2004, British journalist Gerard Baker observed the triumphant shouts of the new-atheist movement that the disasters proved God does not exist. Baker wrote (abridged):

   We ask: why would God allow such suffering? A perfectly legitimate question, of course. We know all too well that undeserved pain, injury, disease, and loss of life are daily facts of life for hundreds of millions of people on the planet.

   If, then, what the atheists are attacking is the notion of an all‑seeing, all‑powerful benign deity, constantly engaged in and altering the tide of human events, they do not need a tsunami to prove their point. The knowledge that just one child somewhere was dying of cancer would bring the whole fantasy crumbing down.

   Put it this way: imagine for a moment, that there were not only no earthquakes, floods and storms, but that there was no innocent suffering and never had been in the history of the earth. Imagine if, every time a faulty gene was on its way to being transmitted to an unborn child, the hand of God dipped in and the gene was corrected. Imagine God frantically circling the globe redirecting every train headed for a faulty bridge, reprogramming every failed computer in a hospital operating theatre, and printing money every time some undeserving chap got down on his luck.

   Imagine, in other words, if everyone since the beginning of time lived to a ripe old age and died in his bed.

   Such a fair, challengeless world might be a wonderful place to live. But I don’t think that it would be recognisably human. If we have reason to doubt the point of our existence in this world, surely we would understand it even less in that one. And if I were God, and had created Man, I am not quite sure that I would see the point either.

That we should be extremely reluctant to blame God for our suffering does not mean that God is absent from our suffering. Both testaments see suffering as part of human life. Jesus said so too: “In this world you will have trouble,” he said. “But take heart! I have overcome the world!”

Over time – and it was frankly a long time – I came to an understanding that for the most urgent issues of life and death, God has already answered our prayers long ago. Heal my wife's cancer, my child's leukemia, my heart disease – these are serious concerns to be sure, for which a miracle would be welcomed indeed. Yet I cannot justify praying for that which the Scriptures offer no support. There is nothing in the Bible promising God's people a pass on the tragedies of life. Of course, I do pray for healing of the sick and I do pray for the lives of those facing death. Yet, in grappling with the many cases I have encountered, I had to understand that God is not a cosmic vending machine dispensing favors for which prayers are the currency. God is Lord of both life and death, and as Paul wrote, there is nothing in life or in death that can separate us from the love of God for us in Christ Jesus. That is itself an answer already given to many prayers. Though the sufferings of this life are real, they are not permanent. In a profound way, our prayers in such times have been permanently answered already in the incarnation, work, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

With that assurance, the more years I spend in prayer, the less I pray, or see the point in praying, mostly for God to do something, doggone it and the more I pray for God to lead me to do something. I pray less that God will conform to my desires or needs of the moment, no matter how pressing they may be, but that I and others concerned in the prayer‑situation be conformed more to God in the likeness of Christ. And that fact is itself an answer, already given, to many prayers, though the sufferings of this life remain real. They just do not remain permanent.

Yet more is necessary, I think. Prayer is only one part of engaging God. In the movie Forrest Gump, there is a character named Lieutenant Dan. He lost both legs in Vietnam and, embittered by his life, finally joins his old subordinate, Gump, in running a shrimp boat off the Louisiana coast. Dan scoffs at Gump's simple faith and sarcastically tells him to pray for shrimp. One day they are caught at sea by a violent storm that threatens to sink the boat. But Dan refuses to seek shelter in the boat’s cabin. He remains high on the mast with the whipping rain and lightning all around, shaking his fist to the storm and yelling at God, "Is this the best you can do?"

Lieutenant Dan is unable to dismiss God as delusion, even though it would be so much easier to do so. He is determined to confront God as God, even to defy God if that is what it takes to encounter him deeply. The two men and their boat survive the storm and over time, Dan finally finds his peace with God.

So many of us decline to encounter God except in storms of life or in pro‑forma occasions such as a minute of silence now and then. We should remember that the prayers of our lips are to be buttressed by godly living for godly purposes. It surely can be no wonder that God refuses to acknowledge prayers seeking his miracles when we so consistently fail to acknowledge his call to us for our daily service. Just as Jesus in the garden, we find that maturity in prayer is not about God doing what we want, but about being willing and empowered to do what God wants even if it makes us recoil. We need remember that the worst thing that can happen to us is not the last thing that will happen to us because Christ has died, Christ is risen, thanks be to God.

The conundrum of life‑as‑prayer is that we come less and less to ask God for a performance as for his presence – come what may. Finally, we realize that God with us and us with God is all the answer God may give us and is sufficient for our need.

Freedom is Choosing Rightly

Thirty years ago my family and I lived in Virginia. We had a friend who was a dietician. She once told of waiting in line in a cafeteria, where there was, of course, a wide variety of foods to choose from. A young teenager was just ahead of her in line with his mother. He was eyeing the serving line eagerly. "Can I get whatever I want?" he asked his mom. ""Yes," his mom replied, "you can get whatever you want."

So, being a dietician, our friend observed what food choices the teenager made. He started off with a Caesar salad with extra dressing, then got fried chicken tenders. As side dishes he got french fries and macaroni and cheese. For dessert he got chocolate cream pie and to drink sweet tea.

Our friend told us, "Cafeterias give you lots of choices, but the rules of healthy eating are always in effect. If you make bad choices of what to eat you will pay the price down the road."

Good choices yield good results, bad choices yield bad results. In the truly important things, what is good and what is bad are not just matters of personal opinion. Life has rules. There is a definite relationship between making good choices and the rules. Both the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, for example, have a law. The Boy Scout law has twelve commandments, that a Scout is Trustworthy. Loyal. Helpful. Friendly. Courteous. Kind. Obedient. Cheerful. Thrifty. Brave. Clean. Reverent. Adhering to the Scout law is what makes you a Scout. Simply joining a troop, pack or den does not make you a Scout. Just wearing a Scout uniform does not make you a Scout. Those things are only choices. But living according to the law is much more than a choice because the law sets standards that Scouts have to follow if they want to be a Scout rather than just pretend to be one.

So let’s look at the relationship between law and choice and freedom. My kickoff passage is a brief one from the Gospel of John, 8:31-32. Jesus said to the people who had believed him, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Now, we’re all for freedom. But we need to ask ourselves, freedom from what and freedom for what?

Freedom is one of the central themes of both the old and new testaments. The story of the children of Israel being freed from chattel bondage in Egypt is still the formative story of the Jews around the world. Yet simply leaving Egypt did not give them freedom although it did relieve them of the lash.

The children of Israel came to understand that they became free only when they received the Law at Sinai, the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law that followed. When Jesus, a faithful Jew, said that holding to the truth about his teachings would make his followers free, he was not talking about being freed from the law. Christian people often believe, erroneously, that we are freed from the Law because we have a new covenant in Jesus Christ. After all, we have a "New Testament" while the Jews, who do not confess Christ, are still stuck with the old one. So we tell ourselves.

But it's not so. First, it’s not clear that Jeremiah’s prophecy of the New Covenant is terribly different from the covenant made concrete at Sinai and explained in the books of Moses. Jesus claimed the New Covenant as his own, embodied by him personally, at the Last Supper. But morally and ethically, there is no difference between the covenant at Sinai and the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.

Second, Jesus said explicitly in Matthew 5.17-20,

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not a letter or a dot will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

Seems clear. Paul picks up on this theme, especially in Romans, by insisting that the Law is freedom because it is through the Law that he – and we, too – understand what sin is because the Law explains it. "If it had not been for the law," Paul wrote, "I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’" For Paul, the great benefit of the Law was that it revealed the greatest means of the grace of God, and that is Jesus. So for Paul, knowing the Law meant knowing what is right and what is wrong and being able to perceive the meaning of Jesus.

I want to hammer this point home some. The Law of Moses that Jesus fulfilled was revealed to humanity. We did not make it up. So far removed from these events are we that we think that morality, as we understand it, is the natural way that people live together. Few people today know that the societies around the ancient Jews and early Christians was brutal. The Romans considered mercy, charity, and forgiveness to be vices, evidence of weakness, not virtues. Human morality absent divine commandment is base and filled with vice.

Morally, our capacities are weighted toward the negative side of the scale. We intend greater good than we ever achieve. Treaties, alliances, aid organizations, political parties, civic groups, even churches – all begun for good reasons to accomplish good things, and all fall short of what their founders intended. And, as Paul said, we often achieve evil even while trying to do good. In fact, we even have a name for it, the "law of unintended consequences."

 Hence is the necessity of God giving the moral law. My friend Rabbi Daniel Jackson wrote, "There are obvious logical elements of the Law of Sinai that might be deduced logically (or rationally). Yet, much of the Scriptures is based on directives and rules ‘that we would not have known’ if the Scriptures did not tell us so."

What we think of a normal morality has been revealed to us by God. The freedom of God’s Law is freedom from the baser demons of our being so that we may discover the better angels of our nature.

It is a choice to obey God’s law or not. And yes, we frequently fail because of our own inability or giving in to temptations. Every choice to depart from God’s Law chips away at our integrity as persons belonging to Jesus. But there is no good reason to do a bad thing. Integrity matters!

During his time as a rancher, Theodore Roosevelt and one of his cowpunchers lassoed a maverick steer, lit a fire, and put a branding iron in it to heat. The part of the range they were on was actually owned by Gregor Lang, one of Roosevelt's neighbors. According to the cattleman's rule, the steer therefore belonged to Lang. Roosevelt saw his employee, the cowboy, raise the glowing branding iron toward the steer, but it was Roosevelt's brand. "Wait, it should be Lang's brand," he said.

"That's all right, boss," said the cowboy. "Lang will never know."

"Drop that iron," Roosevelt demanded, "and get back to the ranch, get your things and get out." Roosevelt later explained, "A man who will steal for me will steal from me."

Integrity, says Webster’s, is "adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty." And that takes the willingness and ability to cleave to a standard, whether you call it the law or a code or something else. Roosevelt knew that integrity is a cloth woven from the whole of a person's life. To break that trust anywhere cheapens whatever good one might do elsewhere.

It does not work to make up your own code of conduct and think that integrity will follow. When I was in the Army, I heard another officer described this way: "He fails to achieve even the low standards he sets for himself." Rare is the man or woman who does not fall short of even their own standards even though many people set their own bar pretty low. Even if we do meet our own standards, we still fail to become what God intends us to be. Perhaps that's why poet Robert Browning asked, "Oh that a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?"

Choices matter, and the choices we make are not isolated from one another. Charles Swindoll told the story of a fellow in Long Beach, California, who went inside a fried chicken place and bought two chicken dinners for himself and his lady friend late one afternoon. The woman working the counter accidentally gave him a bag containing the day's cash proceeds instead of his bag of fried chicken.

After driving to their picnic site, the man and woman opened the bag and discovered more than $800! The man quickly put the money back in the bag. They got back into the car and drove all the way back to the store. He walked into the chicken store, where the manager and counter girl were searching frantically for the money. The customer handed the manager the bag and said, "I came here to get a couple of chicken dinners and wound up with all this money. Here, take it back."

The manager was thrilled to death. He said, "Oh, let me call the newspaper. I'm gonna have your picture put in the local newspaper. You're the most honest man I've heard of." To which they guy quickly responded, "Oh no, no, don't do that!" Then he leaned closer and whispered, "You see, the woman with me is somebody else's wife."

The man did the right thing to return the money, but was he really a man of integrity? I report, you decide. 

It is not our abilities that show what we truly are. It is our choices.

The issue is more acute for young people than for our generation. It sounds trite to say but it’s nonetheless true that I grew up in a different time than they. The advice to "do your own thing" was unknown to us and we would never have even thought of agreeing that something may be right for you and wrong for me, or vice-versa, depending on our own inclinations, points of view and what we simply want to believe.

I think the heart of the problem today is that to be a modern man or woman of today’s culture is to believe in nothing. Or more accurately, to believe in nothing in particular. Modernity prizes personal autonomy so much that the spirit of this age gleefully embraces that nothing underlies fundamental reality, making, in the words of David Hart, "a fertile void in which all things are [claimed] possible, from which arises no impediment" to our desires – and therefore we may decide for ourselves what is right or wrong and what we choose.^[1]

Which is to say that modern America as a whole no longer believes that there is an objective criterion by which to judge our choices because there can be no higher good than being able to make a choice in the first place. Therefore, all judgment, whether divine or human, infringes on choosing – and being able to choose apart from any standards but one’s own exercises "an almost mystical supremacy over all other concerns."

This is a purely an idea of our day. In centuries past, even before Jesus was born, true human freedom was emancipation "from whatever constrains us from living a life of rational virtue" and that led to our intellectual and spiritual flourishing. Freedom was the ability to overcome "our willful surrender to momentary impulses, our own foolish or wicked choices."

"In this view of things [wrote Hart], we are free when we achieve that end toward which our inmost nature is oriented ... and whatever separates us from that end – even if it comes from our own wills – is a form of bondage. We are free not merely because we can choose, but only when we have chosen well."

For to choose poorly is to enslave ourselves to the impermanent, the irrational and eventually the destructive. Simply choosing, unconnected from divine guidance and godly standards, is to choose ultimately to reject freedom, to be enslaved to the bondage of the self, to what Paul called the body of death, and finally to choose to perish rather than attain everlasting life.

The role of God’s law is to enable human beings to be released from the shackles of spiritual and mental bondage that prevent us from being saved in this life and the next. Through the teachings of the so-called "Old" Testament, we are guided to the divine goodness, which we can then perceive embodied in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Paul’s advice of Romans 12 holds true: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

Jesus understood that a life of choosing rightly is not easy. "Enter through the narrow gate," he said, "for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it."

It’s not easy to live rightly to remain free. It is bondage to death and sin that is easy. But we can break those chains if we hold fast to Jesus’ teachings. Live up to God’s law. Then we will be free indeed.

---

^[1]David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions, p. 21.

China sits back to enjoy our decline

 Foreign Policy is one of the two main "trade journals" of international affairs. The other is Foreign Affairs. It cost $200 per year to subscribe to FP, so posting a link to this article would do no good. But the full text is online elsewhere and I have pasted it below. The article is by Andrew J. Nathan, a professor of political science at Columbia University.

Here is the text:

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine falters, Moscow has many opponents and few backers. Even China, Moscow’s closest diplomatic partner other than Belarus, maintains a studied distance—on the one hand blaming the West for its supposed threat to Russian security and condemning the United States for imposing sanctions while on the other hand reaffirming its principled support for the territorial integrity of sovereign states and calling for a negotiated resolution of what it calls “the Ukraine crisis.” Why does China neither endorse nor condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war?

The answer lies in what has become the first principle of Chinese foreign policy: distrust of the United States. For decades, China has embarked on a quest to assume what it regards as its historically mandated position as the dominant power in Asia. As strategic realists, Chinese leaders always expected the United States to push back, seeking to protect its legacy status as the region’s dominant power. And in Beijing’s view, the United States has done just that. As China’s power and ambitions have burgeoned, Beijing assesses that Washington has assaulted the Chinese Communist Party on ideological and human rights grounds; sought to undermine Chinese control of peripheral territories like Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong; perpetuated the division of Taiwan from the mainland; opposed China’s assertion of its rights in the South China Sea; colluded with U.S. allies and partners in thinly disguised coalitions to contain China, such as the U.S.-India-Japan-Australia Quadrilateral Security Dialogue; and used tariffs to try to force China to open its economy and change what the Communist Party views as its successful economic model.

But China remains steadily on course. Despite a host of challenges—exacerbated by recent draconian COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai and other cities—the ruling party remains confident that it can build a “great modern socialist country [that is] prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful” by the 100th anniversary of China’s founding in 2049.

They are equally sure that the United States is locked in an irreversible process of decline that will gradually eliminate it as a serious rival in Asia. Their confidence is based partly in Marxist theory, which says that a mature capitalist economy like that of the United States must encounter financial crises and class conflicts that will drag it down from the heights of prosperity. And it is based partly in their understanding of recent history, as events in the United States seem to unfold in the ways that theory predicts. Chinese confidence was boosted by the U.S. financial crisis of 2008, when Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan famously told then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry “Hank” Paulson, “[Y]ou were our teacher—and our teacher doesn’t look very smart!” Next came what Beijing viewed as an indecisive Obama administration; the vicious 2016 presidential election, when then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton responded to electoral pressures by abandoning a prime strategic asset against China, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal; the Trump administration’s trashing of U.S. relations with its allies; the disastrous mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic; the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on Capitol Hill; the catastrophic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan; and the political paralysis and widening polarization of the Biden era—all while the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Ocean complained that it did not have enough ships to deter China, and the American share of global GDP declined from 30 percent in 2000 to 24 percent in 2019.

Putin’s attack on Ukraine might have contributed to this decline by exposing U.S. indecision and the fragility of its alliances. Instead, it reversed the process—though, China believes, temporarily. The war created a rare consensus in U.S. domestic politics, strengthened the U.S. alliance system, and consolidated Washington’s view of relations with Russia and China as an existential conflict of values and systems. Putin’s war has given the United States an excuse to put increased pressure on China, demand more cooperation from its Asian allies, and pressure India to reduce economic ties with Russia. Worst of all, it has strengthened the U.S. defense commitment to Taiwan.

In this context, China’s strategic priority is to avoid doing anything that would interrupt the process of U.S. decline. China deeply resents American moral posturing, claiming to stand up for what is right and lawful, telling Beijing what is in China’s interest and how it will be punished if it does not comply. Although the American side is sincere about these attitudes, to China, they look like hypocrisy or (at best) self-delusion because it believes that American actions always reflect hard interests. As Beijing sees it, moral posturing is the way in which the United States has always legitimized its numerous political dominations and military interventions—what Beijing calls U.S. hegemony. Now, the United States would like to harvest additional benefits from Putin’s war by splitting China from Russia.

Beijing is not about to fall into that trap. Instead, it seeks to preserve whatever remains of its only substantial partner (aside from North Korea) in its efforts to check U.S. arrogance. The tie that binds China and Russia is antagonism to the United States. The two leaders exaggerated the state of their relationship at their last face-to-face meeting before the war, when they described the partnership as one with “no limits.” In fact, Russia has no interest in China’s primary security issues in Taiwan and the South China Sea, and China has no interest in Russia’s primary security issue of Western encroachment in Eastern Europe. Even though the last of the two countries’ border disputes was settled in 2008, China has not forgotten what it regards as Russian historical aggression, and Russia remains chronically anxious about the influx of Chinese workers into the lightly populated Russian Far East. The two countries forged cooperative security policies through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, founded in 2001, but continue to compete for influence over the four Central Asian members of that organization. China buys oil and gas from Russia but drives a hard bargain on price. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ideology is a version of atheist socialism; Putin’s is a form of Christian kleptocratic capitalism.

Despite all these differences, Chinese strategists live in the world as they find it, not as they wish it to be. No doubt Putin has rendered Russia a much-diminished strategic asset. Its military is degraded, its leverage over Western Europe through energy sales is disappearing, and its diplomatic credibility is bankrupt. China does not appreciate Moscow’s mishandling of the situation, its misestimation of Ukrainian resistance, Euro-American determination, and its own military prowess. Nor do they like that Russia is wrecking a valued trade partner of China: Ukraine. Yet barring a collapse of the Putin regime, even a diminished Russia will remain an asset in China’s resistance to U.S. hegemony. China is not about to throw away its main strategic partner.

But neither does China want Putin to drag it into a premature confrontation with the West. China prefers to let history take its predetermined course, with China gradually rising and the United States gradually declining, without the United States taking flight and adopting an outright containment policy toward China. For all the boilerplate flavor of his remarks, Xi was not misrepresenting Chinese views when he told then-U.S. President Donald Trump in April 2017, “There are a thousand reasons to make the China-U.S. relationship a success,” or when he told U.S. President Joe Biden in November 2021, “A sound and steady China-U.S. relationship is required for advancing our two countries’ respective development and for safeguarding a peaceful and stable international environment. … China and the United States should respect each other, coexist in peace, and pursue win-win cooperation.” Keeping the United States and its allies calm has been a hard enough strategy to pursue as China’s reach for influence has generated inevitable backlash not only in Washington but even in many of its client countries. But for Beijing now to fall in line with Putin’s failing war would only harden resistance to Chinese influence and reduce Chinese access to Western markets, capital, and technology.

These complex calculations explain why China has threaded a middle position in both its rhetoric and its actions. It blames the United States for putting Putin in a position where he needed to defend Russian security, but it asks for an end to the war and respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. It trades with Russia (and will get some good deals on oil and gas), only to the extent that it does not run afoul of international sanctions.

U.S. policymakers seem to understand this careful strategy and are willing to accept it. In his video conference with Xi on March 18, Biden tacitly gave room for China to pursue this middle position by limiting U.S. threats to China’s provision of what Biden called “material support” for Russia. The term is ambiguous but probably refers to supplying Moscow with weapons or backfilling against sanctions without banning normal commerce. China will remain on the sidelines as the drama in Europe unfolds, and when the dust settles, it hopes to resume its long march toward preeminence in Asia.

End text

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.