April 29, 2008: Was His Death The Judgment Of God?

Recently I received the following question from a ministry colleague:

I lead a small DivorceCare group. In my group there is a sweet, godly woman (Anne) who leads a preschool program at a Baptist Church. She divorced her philandering husband after twenty years while he was in his fourth affair. He has a PhD in Psychology but is an arrogant bully. She receives relatively little support and only has the kids half the time. She read and liked my book The Prayer of Revenge, and has been confident that God would accomplish justice on her behalf.

I just found out that the bed-hopping 40-something ex-husband dropped dead last night - somehow related to diabetes. The kids heard a crash in his bedroom, but ignored it, and found him this morning.

She's probably going to ask me: was this an act of God's judgment?

How would you answer her?

And here is my answer.

Interesting!

My short answer is no.

I think that unless we are prophets legitimately claiming inspiration from God, it is simply too difficult to make the connections between "misfortune" (including illness, suffering, poverty, death) and behavior. Job was good but had it bad while the evildoers of Psalm 73 enjoyed all the good luck in the world. Righteous Jim Elliot died at 28; the evangelist of atheism (and serial adulterer) Bertrand Russell lived to 99. (For that matter, Hugh Hefner is still going strong in his 80s! Why on earth doesn't he get judged?)

I gave up long ago trying to figure out what God is doing or what message he is sending when he grants long or short lifespans to people. A few weeks after we arrived in Colombia we were told point-blank by an Ika leader that the tribe would never accept our translating the Bible: we could stay there only if we never translated. Within a year this man was kidnapped by paramilitares, tortured and killed. I thought at the time that God was clearing away the obstacles so that his Word could reach the Ika people. But then this leader was replaced by another who was even more adamantly opposed to our mission! My prophetic guesswork about God's judgment was proven false.

Jesus said that the Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices, and the 18 who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them, were not worse sinners than any others (Luke 13:1-4). My opinion is that the 40-something bed-hopper was probably no worse than millions of other bed-hoppers who have all gone where bed-hoppers go (see Revelation 21:8: "the sexually immoral... - their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur"). Ironically, the philanderer's early demise may actually have been a mercy from God, because he was by death prevented from piling on another 50 years or so of sin which would only have raised the temperature of his personal hell.

I have a serious practical concern for those who are inclined to draw connections between things like death (or any other seeming misfortune) and the judgment of God. My fear is that they'll become very discouraged - or even doubt their faith - when things turn out the opposite of what they were led to expect. Painful as it might be for someone like Anne to hear, it must be said at some point: There is nothing in our understanding of God that would make it impossible for Anne to be the one who drops dead in her 40s (or worse, comes down with paralysis or a degenerative nerve disease), while her son-of-hell ex-husband lives a long healthy happy life! It is not till the life after this one when all wrongs will be set right, and justice (tempered with mercy) will be done, and many of the last shall be first and the first last. This requires perseverance on the part of the saints.

At the same time, I'm very happy for Anne (assuming the recent events are not disturbing to her!), and if you would, please pass along my greetings and best wishes. I don't know what her state of mind is, but I know a Christian man who confided in me, "If my ex-wife passed away now I don't think I'd feel any grief. All my grieving went on during the years she became a denier of God and a hater of me." A painful sentiment, but an understandable one. My prayers will be with Anne as she (perhaps very quietly) rejoices, even as her children grieve, and as she figures out how to manage with them on her own.

May 13, 2007: Salvation Is Enough

Is salvation enough for you?

I mean, if God does nothing more for you than save your soul, will you love him for that? Will you worship him for that? Will you submit to his will and remain steadfast if he does nothing more for you than save your soul from hell and give you eternal life?

Here is why I ask. I get the impression from some sermons I've heard and Christian books I've read that our faith is sometimes "sold" as a solution to problems that go way beyond the fundamental horror of separation from God. Many sincere believers seem to have absorbed this padded teaching without realizing it. It is as though they have been taught to be discontent with mere salvation. They take that for granted, and feel they have a right to expect a lot of other things too - things that God never promised them.

Miraculous healing, for example. I just read a missionary's report about a Nigerian medicine man who abandoned Christianity because, as the missionary reported, "his primary interest was in spiritual power. And if there was no greater power among the Christians than he already possessed, then why join them?" Why indeed. Perhaps to get saved? Is salvation such a shabby, pale, pathetic thing that it cannot compare with the gold treasure of being able to stun people with miracle power? Coming to Christ pleases God and brings forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Isn't that good enough? (It wasn't enough for Simon the Sorcerer, who in Acts 8:9-20 likewise expressed a "primary interest in spiritual power." Peter told him to go to hell.)

What angered me, what had me ready to fling the missionary's book against the wall, was the fact that he sympathized with the medicine man! He agreed that Christianity was pretty pointless if it wasn't miraculously powerful. He wrote, "The Nigerians 'knew' that whatever power Christianity brought it wasn't adequate to deal with such things as tragedy, infertility, relational breakdowns, and troublesome weather. It didn't meet many of their deepest spiritual needs...Though we talked a great deal about spiritual things, the Nigerians understood most aspects of spirituality much better than we did." Oh no, no, no, no. Missionary, you're the one who has the gospel of Jesus Christ, you're the one who understands that the "aspect of
spirituality" that matters is our alienation from God and the reconciliation he has provided through his Son. As for the other four things you mentioned, you would have been wiser to say: "Tragedy? Expect it! The New Testament is the story of one tragedy after another befalling the people of God. Infertility? Some of you will be
childless. Relational breakdowns? Some of you will be evicted from your families for following Christ, others will find yourselves married to beasts who molest your children or give you AIDS. Troublesome weather? Jesus did calm a storm once, but St. Paul couldn't (Acts 27:14-27) - and though Agabus could predict a famine (Acts 11:28), he could not stop it, and neither can we. The rain falls at God's mercy. Whether it falls or not, whether you eat or starve, you must serve God and believe in his Son."

That is the kind of faith we're after - one that trusts God when the mountain of trouble doesn't go away. We must stay on message: Jesus Christ and him crucified, the hope of eternal salvation. Salvation even when it is accompanied by nothing is still a great gift - glorious, undeserved - and anything given us beyond that is grace upon grace. To expect more is dangerous; to demand more is folly. And to teach prospective believers that they will also have health or success or inner peace or better family relationships or a greater circle of influence is to tempt them to renounce Christ when it turns out that they don't get those things, and they conclude that Christianity "isn't all it's cracked up to be."

Be content with your salvation. Feeling you have a right to more than that is like saying, "Hmmph. 'Eternal undeserved bliss in presence of God.' Big deal. Is that all I get?"

May 6, 2007: A Little Self Pity Is OK

Ten years ago the movie GI Jane brought to popular attention the
short poem "Self Pity" by D H Lawrence. As I recall, Navy SEAL trainer
Viggo Mortensen quoted it to Demi Moore in an effort to get her to
toughen up:

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

The poem is an effective rebuke to whining as long as you don't think
too hard about it. I suppose it is true that no wild thing ever felt
sorry for itself, but that is because it never felt sorry for anything. A bird lacks self pity because it lacks pity in general. If we imitated the stoic bird we might face our trials heroically - but at the cost of being callously indifferent to the sufferings of others too.

The Christian attitude is more nuanced. I believe it is ok to bemoan
one's sad condition as long as that creates rather than uses up space
to pity others. Jesus felt sorry for himself on the eve of his
crucifixion. The Bible says that his sweat was like drops of blood on
the ground, that his soul was in agony, and that he pleaded with his
disciples to stay up with him. There was no stoic dismissal of pain,
no "I'm-tough-enough-for-this" rhetoric. Unlike the bird that drops
frozen dead without a peep of complaint, our Lord cried out, "Father!
Let this cup pass from me!"

But Christ's pity for himself assured his pity for us. "For we do not
have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -
yet was without sin." (Hebrews 4:15)

A couple weeks ago on the heels of bittersweet experience a wave of
self-pity washed over me, and I followed it up with a slap of
self-rebuke. "Who am I to feel bad about my circumstances tonight?" I
thought. I am not an AIDS-orphaned child in Africa. I do not come home to find that a drunk wife has abused my kids. My legs work, my
cupboard is full, I am not in pain. Shame on me for feeling sorry for
myself! D H Lawrence's frozen little bird would denounce me as a wimp!

Yes, but it would denounce everybody as a wimp.

My heroes are all people who have experienced pain, and didn't like
it, but who managed then to navigate between the pitiless rocks of
hard indifference and the soft shoals of whiny indulgence. Be like
them: tough, but not too tough. Shed your tears, and then, having
dried them, be kind to others.

April 29, 2007: Does God Speak Today?

A war of words erupted recently in Christianity Today concerning whether God still speaks to us. In an article titled "My Conversation with God," an anonymous professor of a Christian university wrote about "hearing" God tell him to write a book and donate its royalties to a needy seminary student. Pastor and theologian John Piper responded with "The Morning I Heard God's Voice," where he countered that we hear God every time we read the Bible.

Piper doesn't deny that God gave the professor a special communication. He writes, "What makes me sad about the article is not that it isn't true or didn't happen. What's sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely glorious communication of the living God that personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence."

Well, Piper has a point that every-day communication from God in the Bible should not be "passed over in silence." God speaks through Scripture, a fact which renders inexcusable our neglect of it. As I conduct a baptism class for young people, one of the things I repeat to them is that they need to start reading the Bible on their own (if they haven't started already). Get the Bible in your bones, and you will know the voice of the Lord.

But in addition to that, could God still speak a word to us and not others, and, contra Piper, would it be a sad thing if we found that extra-biblical communication "surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening"?

My mother read the Bible countless times, and had it so well in mind that she could spout quips such as a sarcastic dismissal of the jogging fad ("The wicked flee when none pursueth") or a playful resistance to her husband's wake-up call ("A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to rest"). But her knowledge of Scripture and constant dependence on it did not keep her from valuing one "surpassingly wonderful" occasion when God spoke a couple words directly to her.

She was 57. Her husband, my father, had passed away suddenly a couple years before. Having spent 33 years as a homemaker raising 5 children, mom suddenly had to brush up on her office skills, and she managed to find a job as a secretary at Continental Bank in downtown Chicago. Her health was marginal. She was exhausted, and it required more energy than she had to commute on the train and walk 4 blocks each way and work 8 hours. Once while trudging back to the train station on a bitterly cold winter evening she prayed, "Oh Lord, please, deliver me from this job."

And the Lord said to her, "Deliver yourself." She testified later that though the words were not audible, they might as well have been. The message was as clear, simple, stunning and forthright as could be. And she knew it was the Lord.

She put in her notice to quit that job - not knowing where she would find another. But she did find one right away: immediately the Lord provided low-pressure, easy employment nearby working as a maid and cook at the manse of a Catholic parish. That job was as much a Godsend as the message to quit the first one.

Mom was no charismatic. She had little patience for those imaginative and gullible souls who carry on dialogues in their head and label one of the voices "God." The way she put it was, "God speaks, but not in complete sentences." Of course, technically, "Deliver yourself" is a complete sentence, but her idea was that if God is going to say something to us that isn't in the Bible, it will probably be short and sweet and to the point. Something like, "Step to the side" a moment before a piano crashes down from above onto that very spot of the pavement where we had just been standing. I think mom was right.

April 15, 2007: Missionaries Are Nice

Time Magazine correspondent James Wilde was surprised to discover how much he liked missionaries. After spending time with them while doing field research for the December 27, 1982 cover story, "The New Missionary," he said, "their sense of fulfillment [was] contagious. I have never met a group I liked more."

Wilde's words came back to me when I had lunch recently with some missionaries at Wycliffe Bible Translators' West Chicago office. The graciousness of their interaction with me and with one another left me thinking, "I like these people." I get a similar feeling meeting with fellow pastors. I know that there are some pastors out there who are pompous frauds and showboating egotists, but somehow I have been spared their company. The ministers I have known have all been decent, kind, laughter-loving men.

I hope you get the chance to share fellowship with people who, however imperfect, at least have it in their hearts to serve God. Many of my friends have no choice but to work side-by-side with "the greedy, the immoral, the slanderers, the swindlers" (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) every day, and I know it wearies their souls. I was a guest preacher once at a church where a wealthy executive confided to me that all week long he had to swim with sharks, but that church was a refuge for him where he found people of good will. I could relate because years ago I had a similar experience working in a warehouse. At lunch and break time I'd have to listen to bored, foul-mouthed people talk about their efforts to score drug deals or sleep with their sister-in-law or get filthy drunk. I was happy to get out of there.

The entertainment industry would have you believe that there is joy to be found at the bar, the strip club, the casino, the frat party and Spring Break - but as for the company of grim-faced, pith-helmeted, machete-and-Bible-wielding fundamentalists, run away! Those hyper religious people have no idea how to have a good time. Consider the Eurhythmics' hit song, "Missionary Man":

Don't mess with a missionary man...He's got God on his side
He's got the saints and apostles backing up from behind
Black-eyed looks from those Bible books,
He's a man with a mission, got a serious mind...
The missionary man, he was following me; He said,
"Stop what you're doing, Get down upon your knees,
I've a message for you that you'd better believe, believe, believe..."

All in good fun, of course, but I think those lyrics prove that the Eurhythmics never actually met a missionary man. In reality, missionaries are the nicest people you'll ever meet, and you'd be hard-pressed to find more refreshing company. I agree with James Wilde that (with pastors running a close second!) I never met a group I liked more.

April 8, 2007: Think Of Others When You Hurt

I think that getting distressed people to think about others is good
counseling.

Years ago I read an account of a man who by God's grace was brought
back from suicidal depression. He mentioned that the person most
helpful to his recovery was a counselor who forced him to think
through the aftermath of the act he had planned. "How would you do
it?" the counselor asked. "With a gun." "Where?" "In my room." "What
time of day?" "I suppose around noon." "Who would be the first to
discover your body?" Pause. "My son." "Describe to me exactly what
your son would see and smell as he opened the door." And so on. In
brutal and sequential detail he was prompted to relate how his act
would affect other people. Now the issue was no longer "me and my
despair" but "others and their well-being."

When I related this story in Sunday School someone with experience in law enforcement confirmed that this is what negotiators do when trying to talk a jumper down from a ledge. They don't talk about the jumper and his predicament. They don't try to persuade him that life isn't so bad and that he really has things to live for after all. Instead they talk about the aftermath of the splat. What will it do to others? I suppose that even if the individual has no family to mourn him, you can still talk about the sound of crunching bone and all the blood on the sidewalk that will sicken and disturb bystanders, including kids. Please, for their sake, don't jump.

Something I think I have learned in talking to people with intractable
problems is that it helps to get them talking about other people. (I
say I think I have learned this helps because, in all honesty, I don't
know squat about counseling, and cannot claim to instruct those who
are skilled at it.) When I used to call a friend who had experienced
an unspeakable tragedy, I disciplined myself for months not to ask the
question, "How are you?" or "How are you doing?" I didn't ask because
I already knew. He was doing awful and was filled with unbearable
sorrow most of the time. So I asked about his wife and kids and
activities, and told him (in a way I hope did not come across as
self-absorbed) what was going on with me. He spoke of his grief, and I was thankful he was willing to do that - but thankful also that personal grief was not the only thing he talked about.

If we can help others by getting them to think about others, perhaps
we can use this method on ourselves to alleviate our gloom as well.
There is a scene in Tender Mercies (great film!) where Robert Duvall
finds himself in terrible grief over a sudden loss. He goes outside
and throws a football around with his young stepson, and that helps.

Singing Faithfulness To The Love Of Your Life (April 1, 2007)

My son Ben was surprised that I liked Ben Gibbard's I Will Follow You
Into The Dark, because the song clearly is sung from the perspective
of an atheist. But it is not the atheism that I like - it is the
promise of faithfulness till death. Gibbard sings to his own
accompaniment on an acoustic guitar:

Love of mine, some day you will die
But I'll be close behind
I'll follow you into the dark
No blinding light, or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark

If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

No afterlife, just a barren black nothingness for Gibbard and his
beloved - but at least he promises to be there when she leaves, and
that could be 60 years from now! Presumably he plans to be there for
the intervening years as well. That is good. Not enough Christians
understand the meaning of "till death do us part." If the song
reflects Gibbard's true intent, and, resisting the temptations of
musical stardom, he remains a faithful companion to one woman until
she dies in a nursing home, then, despite his atheism, he will have
done well.

It seems like poor Gibbard had a bad experience with religion when he
was young. He sings,

In Catholic school, as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue, as she told me
"Son, fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back

My experience in school was very different. As far as I know, I never
had a Christian teacher - abusive or kindly - but I did have an
English teacher who labored hard to turn me and my classmates into
existentialists. It was a wearisome campaign on the part of an
otherwise outstanding instructor, and my recollection of it has
inspired me just now to work out some alternate lyrics to Gibbard's
tune:


In public school, dismal as Pagan rule
I got my spirit bruised by a skeptic in black
He told me too, that I should read Camus
And learn life is meaningless
So I never went back

When limbo and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the lights on their "Go Away" signs
When Jesus stands beside you
As your soul departs
You'll still be joined unto my heart

Ok, it is not very good yet - this is still a work in progress! But it seems to me that, if an atheist can sing life-long commitment to his beloved in the context of existential gloom, surely we can do the same in the context of divine hope.