The Waking Dreamer: Evil

Showing posts with label Evil. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 02, 2026

In the Face of Evil

Romans 12:9-21[1]

Our world is a beautiful one. The presence of God’s love shines through so much of our world. Focusing on the beauty of the earth helps us find joy in the goodness of creation. But our world also includes a disturbing presence. We have word for it. We call it “evil.” I’m not sure we even know what that word means any longer, to be honest. Many of us live our lives without really having to come face-to-face with evil on a day-to-day basis. We know it’s there but may not even recognize evil in our very own community. On the other hand, some of us have been so deeply affected by evil that it has always defined our lives. That’s a tragedy. Most of the people I know who live with the lingering effects of evil are doing everything in their power to set themselves free from it. And that’s a good thing. But make no mistake, we live in a world that includes evil.

To some extent, “evil” is a matter of perspective these days. Is it “evil” to take unfair advantage of someone in a business deal? Sadly, I think the answer these days depends on which side of the deal you’re on! Most people will say that it’s “evil” to deprive a person of their life savings simply to ensure a “win” in the stock market. Most people also agree that the violence that takes innocent lives is “evil.” Especially when it’s “murder.” But when it’s “collateral damage” in the context of war, we may not take it so seriously. It may take the violence of war touching your life directly for you to use the word “evil” for the violence of war. I guess I would say any violence that takes innocent lives is always evil in my opinion!

In our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Romans for today, he addresses the issue of how we as followers of Jesus Christ should respond to the evil in our world. It’s one of the more difficult teachings of the Bible: in effect Paul says, “don’t repay evil with evil but rather with good”! Perhaps the first step for us to try to live out this principle is to become aware of what is truly evil in our world. Unfortunately, I think things have gotten pretty confused here. We tend to see the “evil” that is far away from us. We may not even know the people we’re pointing the finger at, but we label them “evil,” whether rightly or wrongly. But when it comes to the “evil” that lies at our front door, or lies within us, we tend to turn a blind eye. We do that because it feels safer that way, I think. It’s certainly more convenient for us.

Jesus took a different approach: he called “evil” out where he saw it. And he saw it not in the failings of the people who were labelled “sinners” or “outcasts” or “other.” He called out “evil” when he saw people with power and privilege using that power and privilege to take advantage of others in such a way that they were doing real harm to them. I would say things haven’t changed much on that score. All too often, the “evil” that Jesus called out was being perpetrated by the leaders of his day, including the religious leaders. It’s hard for us to swallow, but I know for a fact that there are religious leaders who have so abused their position that they have done real harm. And all too often, they have done it in Jesus’ name!

One of the reasons why Paul’s teaching about how to respond to evil is so difficult for us is because Paul is following Jesus! He’s most certainly referring to Jesus’ teaching when he says, “Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them” (Rom 12:14, NLT). Jesus taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount to love their “enemies” and to pray for those who mistreated them (Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27-28). But there’s more to it. When Paul says, “Never pay back evil with more evil,” he’s not only following Jesus’ explicit teaching not to “resist an evildoer” (Mt 5:39), even when they strike you, even when they try to take away your most basic necessities! Paul’s going back to the original command to “love your neighbor as yourself” in Leviticus. The beginning of that verse in the original Old Testament context says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge … but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18)! The Bible is full of passages that resound with the same approach: don’t repay evil with evil, but rather with good!

I’ll be the first to admit that goes against the grain for most of us. Our tendency is to resist evil; we want to take the side of the victims and rush to their protection. But Paul follows Jesus and the witness of Scripture when he tells us not to resist evil, but to seek to redeem evil. I think his words reflect the wisdom that when we respond to evil with force, we only give it more power. It’s impossible to avoid the truth that “fighting fire with fire” leads inevitably to the point where we become what we’re fighting.[2] When that happens we’ve abandoned the love that God wants us to practice in the world so that we can take part in his work of redeeming the world!

I think one of the hard truths that Jesus and Paul are trying to get across to us is that only a love that is willing to suffer has the power to truly overcome evil and redeem it.[3] That’s hard to take in. But that is precisely the response God made to evil in Jesus Christ. As Frederick Buechner says, “Christianity … ultimately offers no theoretical solution [to the problem of evil]. It merely points to the cross and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene—not even this—but that God can turn it to good.”[4] We may not like it, it’s hard for us to hear, but one of the lessons of the cross is that there really is no other way to solve the problem of evil in this world! Only the willingness to respond to hostility with peace, to respond to hatred with forgiveness, to respond to violence with love, can redeem evil.[5]

That all sounds fine and good, but the question has practical dimensions that we all have to face. When someone breaks into my home and threatens to harm me or my family, what am I supposed to do? It’s a difficult question. I probably can’t answer that question for anyone but myself. But what I know is that when it comes to facing these difficult decisions, asking “What would Jesus do?” always leads me in the right direction. For myself, I would say that I would consult with home safety experts about finding ways to protect myself or my loved ones without resorting to violence. But that’s my answer to a question that’s a very personal one. At the end of the day we all have to come up with our own answers to those very personal and practical questions about how we’re going to respond to evil in our world. But we must remind ourselves that the whole Bible, from Moses to the Psalms to Jesus to the Apostles, teaches us not to repay evil with evil, but rather to respond to evil in a way that can turn it to good.

[2] Cf. John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, 477, where he says that the one who “attempts to overcome evil with evil, may perhaps surpass his enemy in doing injury, but it is to his own ruin.”

[3] Jürgen Moltmann, “Love and Sorrow,” in The Gospel of Liberation, 74-75; cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 284, where he refers to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ideal of a "religionless Christianity" that eschews the "religious" tendency many Christians have had to look to God for "magical" intervention (like a deus ex machina), and therefore tends to be so "otherworldly" as to neglect God's redemptive purpose for the world. Instead, he advocates for a "godly worldliness" in which the effort to "seek first the kingdom of God" leads to a love that shares the sufferings of this world as "God's suffering over the world." Moltmann concludes, "the way of life in the messianic era is stamped by messianic suffering. It is hardly ever recognizable in any other way, for "dying, and behold we live" (alluding to 2 Cor 4:10). See further Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 204: “Anyone who participates in ‘Christ’s sufferings’” becomes a witness “to the coming truth against the ruling lie, to coming justice and righteousness against the prevailing injustice, and to coming life against the tyranny of death.”

[4] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, 24.

[5] Cf. N. T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in New Interpreters Bible 10: 715, where he says that God’s people are to meet the evil in the world “in the way that even God met it: with love and generous goodness.”

Sunday, March 16, 2025

God is our Refuge

God is Our Refuge

Psalm 91[1]

I’d like to share with you another in my occasional stories of my personal interaction with Scripture. Psalm 91 has been a companion on my journey for almost 45 years. I still remember reading it the first time it made an impression on me. I was a 19-year-old sophomore ministerial student in college. I can still picture in my mind the first time the words of Psalm 91 really sank in for me. I was sitting at my desk in my dorm room, and the words of this Psalm “jumped off the page.” It felt like God was speaking the promises of this Psalm to me personally. The one that stood out was “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you” (Ps 91:7, NRSV). I found that deeply reassuring as I wrestled with the uncertainties and fears I faced as I was trying to find my way as a young man.

Fast-forward twenty years, and my relationship with the promises of this Psalm became complicated by the disappointments of life. I had lost my marriage, my family, and my career. It was a time when I felt like I was living through my worst nightmare, only it had somehow become real. I wondered, oftentimes out loud (literally) what those promises of protection from harm meant in light of all I had lost. “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you” seemed an empty promise at best. At worst, I wondered if it offered false hope. In my mind, it felt like all the calamites Psalm 91 promised God’s protection from had come down on me in one fell swoop. I felt (and said out loud in prayer) that God had somehow let down his end of the bargain.

What I know now is that this was a necessary step in my relationship with this Psalm, with the Psalms, and with the Bible as a whole. Simply taking a particular Bible verse as if it were promising that I would not have to endure the hardships of life was not realistic. What I discovered is that the Psalms themselves, and this Psalm in particular, address that very issue. One of the major themes of the Psalms deals with a person who has done everything in their power to live out their faith in God and yet finds themselves in dire straits, suffering loss or grief or pain so great that makes it feel like God has abandoned them. One of the Psalmists actually asks God (out loud) “Why are you sleeping?” (Ps 44:23, GNT). And then, of course, there’s the Psalm Jesus quoted from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1, NRSV). Long before Jesus uttered that cry, it was the prayer of someone who felt like God had let them down.[2]

The Psalms as a whole deal with this troubling question. To be clear, it’s not just the question of “why do bad things happen to good people?” That’s a hard one, but the Psalms wrestle with a different question: “why do bad things happen to people who put their trust wholly and sincerely in God?” At times, the Psalmists lay the blame for these calamites at the feet of the “wicked.” In the Psalms, the “wicked” are not people who have typically been singled as “immoral” or “sinful.” The “wicked” in the Psalms are deemed so because their only value, their only “moral compass” is about gaining power, influence, or wealth. God’s purposes, God’s truths, God’s ways mean nothing to them. And they demonstrate that attitude precisely by taking advantage of the most vulnerable people.[3]

But not all of life’s hardships have a single, clear-cut cause. There are times when those who put their trust wholly and sincerely in God, who are called the “righteous” in the Psalms,[4] simply find themselves in dire straits. In a very real sense, the suffering of those who trust in God is just part of the mystery of life. That’s an essential perspective I had to learn. Despite the language of this Psalm to the contrary, the promise is not that hard times won’t come. The promise is that that the hard times that inevitably come won’t last forever. The “righteous” may “fall,” but they will not “be utterly cast down.” The reason for this is because the Lord “upholds” them him with his hand (Ps 37:24 KJV). Or, as the Good News Translation puts it: “If they fall, they will not stay down, because the Lord will help them up.”[5]

That brings us back to Psalm 91 and the affirmation of faith that “the Lord is my refuge.” One thing we have to keep in mind as we read this Psalm is the human perspective of the Psalms as a whole. We’re used to dealing with Scripture as “the Word of the Lord,” and we sometimes forget that all Scripture also has a human component. That’s particularly on display in the Psalms, because they’re prayer-songs that came from the life experience of the people who lived out their faith in God. Sometimes we find very human hurt and anger expressed in the Psalms. Other times, like in Psalm 91, we find the personal testimony of someone knows the joy of having been delivered by God from suffering. And those testimonies of personal faith were incorporated into the worship of the people as a whole and became a part of the collection of the Psalms. I would say that there are times however, when the psalm-singers may have gotten a bit carried away. That’s understandable. They’re expressing thanks to God for deliverance from suffering and they’re trying to praise God in the highest ways they can. But at times they promise more than God has promised. And throughout the ages, sincere people have staked their faith on the promise of protection from any and all harm that we find particularly in Psalms like this one.[6] When life doesn’t turn out that way, it leaves us wondering what comfort this Psalm actually offers us.

I think we find a clue in Psalm 91 itself. Much of it reflects the Psalm-singer promising God’s protection to other faithful people by using “you”: “a thousand may fall at your side, … but it will not come near you.” And those promises reflect an honest but human perspective on the assurance of God’s protection. But the last couple of verses shift to a declaration of God’s intent with “I”: “I will rescue those who love me.” In order to keep a balanced perspective on what this Psalm promises and what it doesn’t, we have to read the whole Psalm. At the end, when God “speaks,” he says: “I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name. When they call on me, I will answer; I will be with them in trouble. I will rescue and honor them” (Ps 91:14-15, NLT).

The bottom line for our faith is that God doesn’t promise anyone what they will never have to deal with hard times.[7] Notice, when God “speaks” at the end of Psalm 91, he acknowledges that those who trust in him will have times of trouble. But the promise is, “I will be with them in trouble.” That’s what it means to trust in God as our “refuge” in life. Trusting in God as our refuge, as this Psalm calls us to do, is something that takes place in the midst of the hard times we face in life. It means trusting those hard times will not last forever, and in the end God’s love will have the final word: “I will be with them”; “I will protect them”; “I will rescue them.” God is, and always will be, our refuge!

Learning to take what I would consider a balanced perspective to Psalm 91 didn’t happen for me overnight. I still cherish the promise, “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.” But it took years of experience to come to a more balanced perspective on what that promise actually means. I had to learn the hard way that it doesn’t mean that God will somehow exempt those who trust him from the hardships of life. I learned that from my experiences, but also from reading this Psalm more carefully, and from reading this Psalm in light of the rest of the Psalms, as well as the witness of Scripture as a whole. What I also learned was that with promises like the ones made in this Psalm, we have to hold our faith in tension with the challenges of life. We may not see God’s promises fulfilled immediately, but the assurance of Scripture is that we will see them ultimately. That may feel like small comfort while we’re struggling, but it is a comfort nevertheless. As we take our journey through Lent this year, we’re going to continue looking at what the Psalms teach us about faith. I hope that it will make the promises in the Psalms, and in the Bible as a whole, make sense in the light of the experiences in life that often contradict them. I hope that it will help us all learn more fully what it means to affirm that God is our refuge.

[2] Another example is Psalm 77:9: “Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?” (NIV). I think it’s important to remember that “merciful” and “compassionate” are two of the essential characteristics in the basic declaration of who God is in the Hebrew Bible, Ex 34:6: “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth” (NASB). Essentially, the Psalmists asks whether God has forgotten to be “God”! Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed, 183: “The Old Testament writers are very realistic about the contradiction between what their life was really like and what they believed about the God who chose and promised to help them. The psalmist expresses it most clearly. Over and over again throughout the Psalms he complains about the distance, silence, absence and hiddenness of God… .”

[3] Cf. Hans-Joachim Krauss, The Theology of the Psalms, 129, the “wicked” is “not only one who denies God in some sense yet to be defined; he is above all a person who has no shame before God or humans when he carries his evil, deceitful, deadly murderous plans into action. … With unshakable confidence he goes his way. He relies on the destructive power of his words and asks in his hubris and sense of superiority, ‘Who is our master?’ (Ps. 12:4).” See further J. Clinton McCann, Jr, “Book of Psalms” in New Interpreters Bible IV:667, where he defines the “wicked” in the Psalms as those “who consider themselves autonomous, which means literally ‘a law unto oneself.’” He continues, “Self-centered, self-directed, and self-ruled, the wicked see no need for dependence upon God or for consideration of others.”

[4] They are also called “the poor” in the Psalms. Cf. Krauss, Theology, 150-57. The “poor” in the Psalms are those who “find comfort and support” in God, and who “rely on Yahweh alone” (ibid., 152). On the “righteous” in the Psalms, see further McCann, “Book of Psalms” NIB IV:667, where he defines “righteousness” or “the righteous” in terms of “fundamental dependence upon God for life and future” which he observes is definition of happiness in the Psalms: “To be happy is to entrust one’s whole self, existence, and future to God.”

[5] This reminds me of St. Paul’s affirmation that “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor 4:7-8, NIV).

[6] James Luther Mays, Psalms, 297, puts it even more bluntly: “The Psalm itself poses a danger. Because its assurance of security is so comprehensive and confident, it is especially subject to the misuse that is a possibility for all religious claims, that of turning faith into superstition.” He points out that “bits of the text have been worn in amulets that were believed to be a kind of magical protection for those who wore them”! McCann, “Book of Psalms” NIB IV:1048, picks up on this and insists, “We must not use Psalm 91 as a magical guarantee against danger, threat, or difficulty. Rather, this psalm is a reminder to us that nothing ‘will be able to separate us from the love of God’ (Rom 8:39 NRSV).” He continues, “In fact, Jesus’ and Paul’s faithfulness to God and to God’s purposes impelled them into dangerous situations” and he points out that “when Jesus did claim the assurance of the Psalms, it was from the cross” (emphasis original)!

[7] Cf. Mays, Psalms, 298, where he says in response to the misuse of Psalm 91 in the temptation of Jesus that “Real trust does not seek to test God or to prove his faithfulness”! Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.3:518: “we must remember that the protection of angels consists in the fact that by their witness to God they keep those committed to them in fellowship with God” (when he says “those committed to them, he clear means those angels [plural!] to whose care individuals may have been entrusted by God). Cf. also John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.14.12, p. 171, where he insists that “whatever is said concerning the ministry of angels” the purpose is that “our hope in God may be more firmly established.”

Tuesday, March 04, 2025

Not In Vain

Not in Vain

1 Corinthians 15:25-28, 35-58[1]

I mentioned last week that hope is something we all need to thrive in this life. But hope can be tricky, because it can be hard to know what to place your hope in. Especially in times when it feels like everything you thought you could count on in life has dropped out from under you. Those of us who practice faith in Jesus Christ have a hope for something more, beyond this life. But that hope has resulted all too often in an attitude that what happens now doesn’t really matter. That was why Karl Marx criticized religion as a kind of drug that made people passive in the face of the wrongs that were being perpetrated against them. I think that’s why we need the full version of the Christian hope: not just that we’ll go to heaven when we die, but also that God is working to restore all our lives and everything he created in the same way that Jesus was raised to new life. The miracle of the resurrection on that first Easter Sunday points us to the promise that God is working to change this world, and everyone and everything in it.

Even with that hope, there are still some pitfalls to avoid.[2] For some of us, it becomes all too easy to take an overly optimistic view. Because we have the hope of being with Jesus at our death, we can treat death like it’s no “big deal.” It’s just “passing on” to another stage of our journey. That’s not the biblical view. As Paul puts it in our lesson for today, death is an “enemy” (1 Cor 15:26). Death has a “sting” that is real and harmful (1 Cor 15:55). Paul’s not just talking about physical death, although as many of us have experienced, that can be truly harmful to those of us who have lost loved ones. Paul is also talking about the destructive power that “death” exerts in our lives and in our world to this day through the powers and persons who align themselves with evil.[3] Our hope is not that somehow death is no “big deal.” Our hope is that in Jesus’ very real death on the cross, and especially by raising Jesus to new life, God has overcome the power of death.

The other pitfall goes to the opposite extreme. For some of us, it becomes all too easy to take an overly pessimistic view. Because of the harm that death continues to inflict in our lives and in our world, we can decide that God must not be able to do anything about it.[4] But that’s also not a biblical view! Not by a long stretch! The God to whom the Apostle Paul points us is the God who not only worked in the lives of the people of Israel and in the lives of believers in the early church all those centuries ago. This God is the God who continues to work in and through us to bring life out of all the harm that death can inflict on us. We have this faith, this confidence, this hope, because Jesus died a very real death on the cross. But we also have this faith, this confidence, this hope, because God raised Jesus to a new life that is just as real. That means death will not have the last word for anyone.

The hope of the Gospel is the promise of Jesus’ resurrection. It’s the promise that the life God revealed in Jesus’ resurrection is a new kind of life that is stronger than the worst that death and all its powers and those who align themselves with them can throw at us. Paul points to this hope when he insists that “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54), the victory Jesus won when God raised him from death. Paul can go so far as to “taunt” death like one might do to a defeated and humiliated bully: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55, NLT). The reason he can act so confidently in the face of the harm that death still can and does inflict on us is because he knows that God has given us “victory” over all of it “through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:57). The life that God has injected into this world through Jesus’ resurrection has already defeated death and all the powers and persons aligned with it. And the promise of our faith is that this new life will finally and fully define all creation. For everyone and everything!

Our faith and our hope exist in a balance. We don’t naively water down the power of death or the very real harm those who align themselves with evil can do in our world. Rather, with Paul we take all of that seriously as an “enemy.” But on the other hand, we don’t just give up in the face of the sometimes overwhelming discouragement we feel over the influence of those powers and persons. That’s because we’ve seen the light of new life that dawned on that first Easter morning, and with Paul and the hosts of believers throughout the ages we put our faith and our hope in the power of that new life.[5] We hold our faith and our hope in the power of God to overcome evil in this world in a balance. But the scale is tipped in favor of hope, because Jesus’ resurrection points us to the day when the final victory will come.

We don’t place our hope in some idealistic vision that attributes to humanity a goodness that can prevail against all evil. There is much goodness to be found in the human family, to be sure. But it’s not equal to the task of overcoming the powers of evil and those who align themselves with it. Neither do we place our hope in sheer determination and willpower to resist in the face of all the wrongs that are so blatantly perpetrated in our day, every day. Human willpower isn’t sufficient to the task either. We place our hope in the confidence that, as the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth said, “God is not God in vain.”[6] Or as Paul puts it in our lesson for today, ultimately God will be “utterly supreme over everything everywhere” (1 Cor 15:28, NLT).[7] And so we place our hope in God, and in the victory he has won in Jesus Christ. And that hope leads us to the confidence that God will fulfill all that he has promised to do. One day, we will share in the new life that Jesus now enjoys.

So how then shall we live in these times of turmoil? Do we retreat behind the walls of our homes and churches and sit back, waiting for God to work a miracle? Or do we “plunge into the present struggle” as our affirmation of faith last week called us to do, putting the courage and energy our faith and hope give us to good use here and now?[8] I think St. Paul would have us do the latter. After all that he had to say about the reality of Jesus’ resurrection and the hope it gives us, Paul concluded this chapter by saying, “So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless” (1 Cor 15:58, NLT). That last phrase is often translated more literally “in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” We may or may not see tangible results from our work. But I believe that every act of integrity, every act of kindness, every act motivated by faith and hope and love can and does make a difference.[9] Not just because of our sincerity, or our determination, but because the new life of our resurrected lord Jesus means that what we do here and now is “not in vain”!

[1] © Alan Brehm 2025. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/23/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church.

[2] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed, 378.

[3] Paul speaks of this especially in Romans 5, where he contrasts the effects of death’s “reign” with the effects of God’s grace that lead to the “victory” that we have through Jesus Christ (cf. esp. Rom 5:17). See especially The Message translation: “If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, absolute life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?” Cf. also Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: a commentary on the Greek text, p.1302.

[4] This was Harold Kushner’s view in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. He and his wife had experienced the loss of a child, so while I may disagree with his view, I would not want to criticize him personally.

[5] Cf. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 283. See also ibid., 285, where he says that Christians “know of a power at work here and now greater than the power of evil, a power that keeps breaking into our godless and godforsaken world to heal old wounds, make new beginnings, and (if only now and then, here and there) give us a glimpse of the final victory of God’s compassion and justice that are on the way.” See further, ibid., 375: “The God in whom we hope is a God who not only will be but is the powerful and compassionate Creator and Ruler of the world. The crucified and risen Christ who will come to overthrow all the powers of darkness and evil that spoil God’s good creation and human life in it has already triumphed over them and even now is at work to complete the work he has begun.”

[6] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3.4.1:196. While he concedes that work of reconciliation that Jesus has accomplished through the cross and resurrection (elsewhere he calls it “the accomplished alteration of the whole world situation”; ibid., p. 191) still faces opposition in this world, he insists that we must see this “battle” as resulting in the victory of God.

[7] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 163, where he points to the final victory of Jesus’ resurrection as serving “the sole and all-embracing lordship of God.”

[8] Cf. “A Declaration of Faith,” 10.5 (Presbyterian Church in the United States, 117th General Assembly 1977, reissued by Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.], 1991).

[9] Cf. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 280-81: “we can and must confidently throw ourselves into the fight against evil in our own lives and in the world around us, knowing that we do not fight alone but with the one who is stronger than all the forces of evil.”

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Searching for Goodness

Psalm 146[1]

In some ways, it’s easy to see all that is good in this world. We don’t have to look any farther than the freshness of a beautiful morning, or the vibrant colors of a stunning sunset. The world of nature is so full of beauty we have to make an effort not to see the goodness all around us all the time. And then there’s our human family. Yes, relationships can be challenging, but if we direct our attention to what is right about our relationships, it’s not hard to find plenty of people in our lives who are good and kind and loving. You know, the ones who know us, flaws and all, and still treat us with love and respect. You know me well enough that it shouldn’t surprise you that I find children to be some of the most consistently beautiful people in this world. All of that and much, much more leads us to conclude with Louis Armstrong, “and I think to myself, what a wonderful world!”

But there is another side to life in this world, what one contemporary voice calls the “tragic” side of life.[2] Yes, there are a lot of good and kind people in this world, but there are also a lot of hurt people who hurt people. Right now, at this moment, there are perhaps more people in our world who are affected in some way by war than at any other time in history. So much so that it’s hard to accurately estimate just how far the violence of war extends. But perhaps an even more “tragic” side to our experience with this life is that most of us know that we live in a world where “bad things happen to good people.” Whether it comes from other people or simply from “life,” when this happens it can be hard for us to see any goodness in the world at all.

This can pose a serious challenge to our faith. We believe in a God who is loving and all-powerful. But for some of us, the pain and suffering in this world make it difficult if not impossible to believe in such a loving God. Surely a loving God would intervene on behalf of the innocent who suffer, especially the children. Of course, it makes much more sense to say that much of the suffering in this world is caused by people rather than blaming it on God. But we’re still left wondering, in view of all the pain in this world, whether God is either loving or all-powerful. Some would say God is loving but can’t do anything about the suffering in this world. I don’t think that helps very much. Others would take the darker option and conclude that God is neither loving nor good, precisely because he could do something but chooses not to. Either way, we’re left with a crisis of faith. And questioning God’s goodness can leave us wondering if there’s any good in the world at all! That’s a pretty dark place to be.

I’d like to be able to tell you that the Bible gives us a clear answer to this dilemma. But it doesn’t. What it does do is continue to insist that God is both loving and all-powerful. Take, for example, our lesson from the Psalms for today. The Psalmist affirms that God is all-powerful, saying, “joyful are those … whose hope is in the Lord their God. He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them” (Ps 146:5-6, NLT). Throughout the Bible, God’s creation of all the heavens and the earth, along with all that is in both the heavens and the earth, stands as the fundamental witness to God’s power. God alone is the one who had the power to create all the heavens and the earth, and everything in them. That means that God also has the power to “keep every promise forever,” so that we can find joy in life by placing our hope in God. That remains true even in the midst of the confusing mix of good and evil we have to contend with in this world.

I think it’s important here to sort out what God has and has not promised. God has not promised to give us everything we want in life, in the way we want it, when want it. What God promises us is, in a word, justice. That might not sound very appealing. We think of justice in terms of crime and punishment. We think God’s justice is the opposite of God’s mercy.[3] But listen to the promises of our Psalm for today: “He gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry. The LORD frees the prisoners. The LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are weighed down. The LORD loves the godly. The LORD protects the foreigners among us. He cares for the orphans and widows” (Ps 146:7-9, NLT). What God promises is to right the wrongs, to provide for those who have no means to provide for themselves, to show compassion and mercy to those who are the least and the left out and the passed over and the shut out. That’s the kind of justice God promises.

This gives us one way to find goodness in this world. Wherever there is restoration for those who have been wronged, wherever those who suffer want have their needs provided, wherever those who endure oppression find freedom, wherever God cares for the last and the least and the left out, we can see God’s goodness at work in this world, right here and right now. But we have to have the right frame of mind to be able to see these things as the fulfillment of God’s promises and find joy and hope in them. And the frame of mind we need to see God’s goodness all around us is one of generosity, compassion, and mercy. That’s because the essence of the promises that our Scripture lesson says God will keep is generosity, compassion, and mercy. When our mindset is one of selfishness, or stinginess, or criticism, or we’re stuck in fear, anger, or envy, it’s hard for us to even see God’s mercy at work in this world, let alone rejoice in it.

I think Jesus embodies a mindset of generosity, compassion, and mercy. Of course, he was well aware of all the wrongs in the world. And it grieved and even angered him when he saw them. But at the end of the day, Jesus lived with an unwavering confidence in God’s generosity, compassion, and mercy. As a result, he went about extending that generosity, compassion, and mercy to others—even to those who opposed him, even to those who were trying to kill him! That’s what he was doing when he healed a gentile woman’s daughter, even though both of them would have been despised by most of the Jewish people of their day. Or when he cared for a deaf mute, who would have been very easy to overlook and ignore. When we look at people in need with a critical or judgmental mindset, it lets us off of the hook and makes it easier to just walk right past them.

But as our lesson from James puts it, “Mercy overrules judgment” (Jas 2:13, CEB). In our reading from the New Living Translation we heard that verse rendered, “if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you.” But most other versions translate it more like the Common English Bible: “Mercy overrules judgment.” That’s a principle that relates not only to God’s judgment, but also to our attitude toward being judgmental. “Mercy overrules judgment.” Always! One reason for that is because exercising mercy not only opens our hands so that we share with those in need, but it also opens our eyes to see how God is keeping his promise to show mercy and compassion to us all.[4] I think that’s the key to being able to see what is good in this world, even though a lot of bad things happen. When we learn to see God’s mercy at work in this world, we can also see the good all around us.

[2] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 1^st edition, 118-25, where he defines the “tragic sense of life” in terms of the question “Does anyone know or care that we are here?” (118), a question he suggests we must ask “In this world of time and happenstance, of good fortune and bad, of pleasure and pain, of surpassing joys and nightmarish cruelty and unhappiness” (119). In the context of this unavoidable dimension of human life, he defines faith as “faith that there is something that lifts us above the blind force of things, a mind in all this mindlessness” (125). It is faith “That there is something … or someone … who stand by us when we are up against the worst, who stands by others, the least among us” (125), which amounts to saying “yes” to life “for what it is, neither more nor less, without any additions or subtractions” (120).

[3] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, 127: “The opposite of God’s justice is not God’s mercy, but human injustice.” He goes on to define the “passion for justice” on God’s part reflected in the Hebrew Bible as directed toward human social structures that are “politically oppressive,” “economically exploitative,” and “religiously legitimated” (130). The answer to these unjust social structures is the Kingdom of God, which represents “what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers of this world were not” (132)!

[4] Cf. Hans Küng, The Christian Challenge: A Shortened Version of ON BEING A CHRISTIAN, 295-97: “man [sic] can accept the identity, value, and meaningfulness of reality and of his own existence in particular only with a ‘basic trust.’ … if man [sic] wants to realize himself at all, if as a person he wants to gain freedom, identity, meaning, happiness, he can do so only absolute trust in him who is able to give him all this.” This basic trust is defined as “trust in God, inspired by faith, as it was made possible by Jesus Christ.”

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Oppportunities

Opportunities

John 9:1-42[1]

It doesn’t take long for those of us who live in this world to learn that bad things sometimes happen to good people. In fact, sometimes what happens to good people in this world is downright evil. I personally think that makes praying “deliver us from evil” in the Lord’s Prayer all the more relevant for all of us. For me, at least, one of the reasons I look to the Lord’s Prayer is because the evil in this world can cause us to struggle with our faith. In fact, more than one good soul has turned away from faith because of the evil that has come either into their life or the life of someone they care about. And there are many sensitive souls among us who struggle to believe in a loving God simply because there is just so very much violence and injustice in our world.

I would say that one part of this experience that makes it particularly challenging for faith is the pain and fear we may have to carry as a result of the bad things that can happen to us. When those “bad things” truly rise to the level of “evil,” they tend to leave a wound. And wounds like that can run deep and sometimes they never fully heal. Or if they do heal, they remain very sensitive to certain triggers. And that kind of pain naturally leads to fear. But I would say, from my experience with fear, that it always cuts us off from the one source of true healing: our God whose love for us never fails. We cannot know what the future will bring, whether good or bad, but if we’re going to live in faith rather than staying shackled to our fear, we’re going to have to learn to find the good that God brings even out of the hard things in life.

Our Gospel lesson raises this issue for us right from the start. The lesson tells us that as Jesus “walked along, he saw a man blind from birth” (Jn 9:1). The fact that this man was born blind led Jesus’ disciples to ask him what must seem to us a strange question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (Jn 9:2). I think the question must sound strange to our ears because we don’t see a disability like blindness as a punishment from God. But it was common in that day to think of the suffering in this world as a direct result of somebody’s sin. And so they could entertain the possibility that a person could sin even before they were born in order to explain something like this.

That kind of cause and effect approach to sin and suffering had a long history with the Jewish people. It started with the Ten Commandments, which say that God punishes “children for the iniquity of parents to the third and fourth generation” (Dt 5:9)! And, of course, it was the premise for much of the history of Israel in the Hebrew Bible: when the king did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so did the people, and they suffered for it. And it’s the assumption that Job’s so-called “friends” made: if you’re suffering in any way you must have done something wrong. So they stubbornly kept trying to convince Job to admit his sin to find relief from his suffering.

But Jesus explodes that assumption about sin and suffering. He refused to accept the premise of the disciples’ question, that someone must have sinned to cause this man to be born blind. Instead, he answered them bluntly, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned” (Jn 9:3). I think Jesus was carrying forward a point that had already been made in the book of Job. Job maintained his innocence, even though God reminded him that when he asked the question “why?” he was asking more than he could begin to understand. But God upheld Job’s integrity. In fact, at the end of the story, God’s anger was kindled against the friends for insisting that God was punishing Job for something he’d done wrong. God rebukes them, saying, “you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). Even Job’s questions were more true to God than their assumptions about sin and suffering.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus not only denied the assumption that suffering must have been caused by sin. More than that, he pointed his disciples in a completely different direction. He insisted that this man was born blind “so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (Jn 9:3). Now, I would have to say that this point of view could also be abused. But I think what Jesus was trying to do was to turn people away from obsessively looking for someone to blame when things go wrong in life. Instead, I think Jesus wanted them and us to look for the good that God can bring even out of the worst things that can happen to us. Of course, in this particular situation, I think Jesus said what he did in part because he knew he was going to restore this man’s sight.

One of my favorite parts of the Study Catechism that we use with the Confirmation Class and in worship is the affirmation that God brings “good out of evil, so that nothing evil is permitted to occur that God does not bend finally to the good.”[2] It’s a wonderful promise that helps us look for the good that God can bring out of suffering. But it can also present a challenge for our faith. After all, not every blind person has their sight restored. And more often than not it can be very difficult, if not impossible, when something bad happens to us or someone we love to even consider that God could bring good out of it.

But I would say that this is one of those places where our faith becomes more than just words we recite together on Sunday morning. To be able to look at this life, this life with all the suffering and hardships it can bring, and put our faith in the God whose love for us never fails is perhaps the greatest challenge we will face. Partly, that’s because we may never see the good that God brings out of the bad things that may happen to us. The catechism does say that God bends the evil that occur “finally” to the good. To leave open the possibility, the hope, that God will bring good out of even the worst things that have happened to us in this life is to take a step beyond a life of pain and fear into a life of trust. To do so is to recognize that our lives are in God’s hands, and that we may never know what opportunities, what good things, God can create from the hardships we suffer in this world.

[2] “The Study Catechism: Full Version with Biblical References,” Approved by the 210th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, USA (1998), question 22.

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Dismantling Evil

Matthew 4:1-11[1]

Our culture has an almost irrational fascination with evil. When I was in college, I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula for one of my English classes. It’s a gruesome and horrific story, one meant to inspire fear of the unknown powers of evil in this world. But the ultimate point of the horror genre, at least in that modern era, was to provide the assurance that no matter how frightening the powers of evil in this world may be, they can and will be overcome by good. Of course, in our postmodern day, those lines have been blurred in popular culture. Novels and films intentionally play up the “good bad guy” over against the “bad good guy.” And the fascination with evil persists. Whether it’s demons, or vampires, or zombies, people seem to think that if they can understand evil, then it’s not such a threat.

I’m not sure that’s the best way to try to deal with the reality of evil in the world. We only have to turn on the evening news to see all kinds of evil run rampant, seemingly unchecked. And way too many people take comfort in being able to say that all this is the work of a “devil.” Somehow, giving credit to a “devil” who is behind all the evil in the world helps people feel better. I think that’s partly because it gives them a ready explanation for where all this evil comes from. I think it’s also because it “confines” evil to one particular figure. In a strange way, that provides reassurance. But in my mind, the popular myths around a “devil” who is everywhere at all times, who is all-knowing and all-seeing, and who has the power to tempt anyone anywhere only increases fear. And it gives any “devil” there may be in this world way too much credit.

I think one of the purposes of our Gospel lesson from Matthew is to demonstrate that whatever evil powers there may be in this world have been decisively defeated by Jesus. Of course, that’s one of themes surrounding the cross and the resurrection in the NT. As the writer of the letter to the Hebrews puts it, Jesus “destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life” (Heb 2:14-15, MSG). In our Gospel lesson for today, we find that the “devil” held no power over Jesus from the very start. Although Jesus was weakened by his forty-day fast, which means that the temptations he faced were real, he was able to dismiss every one of them simply by reciting Scripture. And this wasn’t the last temptation he would face.

Part of the reason for Jesus’ ability to dismiss the “devil” so easily is because he had already declared at his baptism that he was determined to “fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3:15). This is a theme that Matthew’s Gospel develops, and it includes Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount about what it truly meant to follow him in discipleship: responding to the demand of grace by loving God and loving others. It also includes Jesus’ obedience to the Father’s will, seen ultimately in his willingness to go to the cross. But here, we see Jesus’ determination to “fulfill all righteousness” in his unwavering commitment to remain true to God in the face of every temptation.

Every one of the temptations in this story had to do with how Jesus would fulfill his role as God’s “beloved son,” as the voice from the heavens had identified him at his baptism immediately before the temptation (Mt 3:17). Although it seems harmless for Jesus to have fed himself by turning a stone into bread, the temptation went deeper than hunger. The question was whether he would trust in and rely on God to meet all his needs, or whether he would take matters into his own hands. In response to Jesus’ faithful obedience to Scripture, the second temptation (mis)quotes scripture regarding his trust in God. The misuse of the scripture can be seen in that the “tempter” twisted a passage affirming God’s unfailing care into a challenge to put God to the test. Each time, Jesus demonstrated his commitment to “fulfill all righteousness” by remaining true to God.

I think in Matthew’s Gospel we’re meant to see the fact that, despite Jesus’ weakened condition, the “temptation” was really no contest. All he had to do to ward off every temptation was to recite scripture. And the scriptures he used were among the most basic in the Bible: they are related to the call to stay true to one true God from the Shema, the verse that pious Jewish people still recite every day (Dt 6:4-5). Even the final temptation, the offer of “all authority” if Jesus would turn from his loyalty to God and worship the “devil,” was an almost pathetic attempt that failed spectacularly. Again, all Jesus had to do was recite the most basic scripture, which he likely had known all his life: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him” (Dt 6:13).

One aspect of Matthew’s story of the temptation may be hard for us to see. In that final temptation, the “devil” falsely offered Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory” on a “high mountain.” As if the “devil” would have been able to give what belongs to God! At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, meeting his disciples on another mountain, Jesus declared that God had given him “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Mt 28:18). As a result of Jesus’ commitment to “fulfill all righteousness,” even when it meant going to the cross, God raised him to his own right hand, far above all the powers of evil there may be in this world. Jesus our Savior dismantled the power of evil by his willingness to remain true to God in the face of every temptation.

When we buy into the popular mythology surrounding the “devil,” we may give it far too much credit. Any “devil” there may be is a created being. It cannot be everywhere at all times, it is not all-knowing or all-seeing, and it does not have the power to tempt anyone anywhere. Only God has the power to be everywhere at all times, to be all-knowing and all-seeing! More than that, any “devil” there may be is a defeated being. It could not even stand up to Jesus after he was weakened by forty days of fasting. It certainly cannot rival the power of the risen Christ reigning as Lord from the right hand of God. That means that ultimately, we don’t have to fear evil in this world. Jesus’ death and resurrection broke the power of evil forever. Of course, we still face the reality of evil in this world, but because Jesus is the one who is with us, he helps us face every temptation. And more than that he gives us the power to join with him in dismantling whatever evil there may be in our world in the same way as he did: by remaining true to God.

Sunday, June 06, 2021

(No) Sympathy for the Devil

Mark 3:20-35[1]

In 1968, the Rolling Stones shocked the world with a track on their album Beggars Banquet: it was called, “Sympathy for the Devil.”[2] Those who saw “Rock and Roll” as a corrupting influence on young people immediately seized on this as evidence that the Stones were “devil worshippers.” If you actually read the lyrics of the song, the “devil” is reminding us that many of the things “blamed” on the “devil” really belong at the feet of human greed, malice, prejudice, and hatred.[3] I refer to this song because I think all too often the “devil” has become a convenient excuse for our bad behavior. Like the mainstream culture of the 1960’s we still cast blame for the evil in this world on someone or something “other” than ourselves. Essentially, Mick Jagger’s lyrics exposed the fraud of a so-called “decent culture” that was still sanctioning atrocities of all kinds. And rather than recognize it, the “pillars of society” did what people have done through the ages: they blamed it on the “devil.”

That’s what’s going on in our Gospel lesson for today. Jesus had come into the Jewish world with the announcement that the kingdom of God was at hand, but it was a kingdom that ran contrary to their traditional beliefs. As a result, the Jewish religious leaders were already convinced that he had to be “destroyed” (Mk 3:6). In our lesson for today, they make an accusation that was intended to incite the people to take him out and stone him: “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons” (Mk. 3:22). It was an accusation so offensive they hoped that all they had to do was make it, and the crowd would take care of the rest. They were basically accusing Jesus of blasphemy.

But Jesus refutes that accusation in two ways. He begins by pointing out that it’s illogical: “if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand” (Mk 3:24). It would make no sense for a “devil” to attack itself. Beyond that, Jesus goes on to say that “no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered” (Mk 3:27). It may not be obvious, but I think Jesus is claiming that he was in fact disempowering evil by the Spirit of God.[4] In a very real sense, he turned the accusation of blasphemy back against them! God was manifesting his kingdom through Jesus, and they had rejected it.

All of this raises the question of the role of the “devil” in our faith. For me, the place to begin is the beginning. There is no room in the Bible for a personification of evil who is equal to God.[5] This is due to the biblical faith that “the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Dt. 6:4). God is the only one who reigns supremely as Lord of all creation. The Bible clearly attests the experience of evil in the world, but there is hardly any specific reference to a “devil” in the Hebrew Bible. On the other hand, the NT uses this language frequently, and calls this “instigator of evil” by many names. The question is whether we are meant to understand these references literally or figuratively.[6]

Many have believed we are to take them literally. But most of what we were taught about the “devil” was crafted over centuries. It began with the Jewish lore that was used to explain the existence of evil. As a result of their exposure to Persian religion in Babylon, the Jewish people turned to the idea of an “archenemy” of God to make sense of their suffering. This was later developed by church fathers into a “theology” of the “devil” as a fallen angel.[7] Many of our beliefs about the “devil” actually arose in the Middle Ages, in response to the horrors of wars and plagues.[8] They were not so much the official doctrine of the church. People felt themselves to be threatened by powers that were beyond their control. As a result, the “devil” became firmly embedded in the Christian imagination.

What are we to make of all this? It’s clear that there is evil in this world. Much of it truly is of our own making. But there is evil in this world that goes beyond human sin. At the end of the day, the fact that we live in a world created by a loving God where bad things happen to good people is a mystery that defies explanation. If the “devil” helps you make sense out of it, you have centuries of church tradition to support you. But remember, we do not “believe in” the “devil.” Rather, we believe “against the power of darkness.”[9] If there really is a “devil,” we need to remember two things: first, it is a created being. That means its power is limited. It is not all-powerful, all-present, or all-knowing. Those qualities belong to God alone. And second, it is a defeated being. That means we don’t have to live in fear of a “devil” constantly threatening to “undo” us.

I choose to place my faith in “one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” and in “one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,” and in “the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life” as the Nicene Creed puts it. That is the foundational statement of our faith, and I was raised in that faith. For that reason, I’ve never felt compelled to see this world as one that’s “filled” with “devils.” Even though I’ve experienced my share of evil in life, I see this as “my Father’s world”! And Jesus my Savior and Lord is the one who reigns over all this world at the right hand of God. In our lesson for today, Jesus reminds us that there is no rival that can stand against God’s kingdom. Any “devil” that may be out there is a weak and limited creature. Through the cross and resurrection of Jesus God has already broken the power of evil in this world. And one day all evil will be banished from God’s creation. So for my part I have no sympathy, no concern, and not even any credit to give to a “devil,” because I believe in and entrust my life to the one triune God whom alone I make every effort to worship and serve![10]

[2] The Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil,” Beggars Banquet (1968: Decca Records). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy_for_the_Devil .

[3] Robert Greenfield, “The Rolling Stone Interview: Keith Richards” Rolling Stone (19 August 1971).

[4] Cf. Matthew 12:28: “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.”

[5] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, revised edition, 175: “We believe in the one true and living God who alone is God and who alone will be triumphant in and over the world.”

[6] Cf. Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, 97-98, where he distinguishes four levels in discerning the “Word of the Lord” in Scripture: 1) the direct witness concerning God and his saving acts and words; 2) the insights that are directly based on this witness and follow from it; 3) “representations” by which these insights are figuratively expressed without a definite connection to the insights themselves; and 4) representations that derive from other social or religious traditions. Berkhof assigns the “devil” to the third level “because the figure of a satan seldom occurs [in the Bible], and where it does, in very different ways.”

[7] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), 135-37.

[8] See J. B. Russell, The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History, 140-156, where he traces the "story" of the "devil" in the art, literature and plays of the High Middle Ages.

[9] Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 180.

[10] See “The Brief Statement of Faith,” The Book of Confessions, 311: “In life and in death we belong to God. Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, we trust in the one triune God, the Holy One of Israel, whom alone we worship and serve.”

Sunday, January 31, 2021

Released

Mark 1:21-28[1]

We all carry some kind of chains with us throughout life. Whether it is something we have done to ourselves or something others have done to us, whether it is a physical limitation or a psychological disability, whether it is a wound that others can see or is hidden deep in our souls, we all know what it is to be bound. Some of us may find a measure of freedom from the chains that bind us, while others may carry those chains with them to the end. Many of us struggle against what binds us, only to know the disappointment of defeat and the hopelessness of despair. We long to be released from all that prevents us from knowing the freedom, joy, and peace of the life God intends for us.

As we look at our Gospel lesson for today, we may miss the fact that it is essentially a story about how Jesus has the power and authority to break the chains that bind us in this life. That’s because it’s a story about the encounter between Jesus and a man “with an unclean spirit” at the synagogue in Capernaum. For some of us, the mention of an “unclean spirit” sends us cowering into the corner of the safest place we can find. They conjure up images that have been created by our own culture: images of a supernatural enemy who is out to get us all. And in the face of that enemy, it can leave you feeling powerless and helpless.

Others may respond differently. They don’t believe in “demons,” and so they find the whole story hard to swallow. Those who look at the passage in this way may believe that we make our own destiny, and anything “evil” we may experience in life comes from our own doing. They may also insist that whatever good comes in this life comes from our own doing. They don’t fear “the Devil,” and they don’t believe in God. And they don’t like the idea of Jesus having any power or authority over their lives in any way. They believe they are the masters of their own fate!

While we dare not discount the reality of evil in our world, we need not take the biblical language that describes that evil literally. It is clear that language was influenced by the prevailing views of the culture in that day. I don’t think we have to endorse the personification of evil as “Satan” or “demons”, any more than we would endorse the idea that the world is flat or that the earth is at the center of the universe. In fact, I would say that many in the church give too much credit to “Satan” and “demons.” While there may have been a time when that was an adequate explanation for the evil in our world, the “Devil made me do it” just does not suffice today.

Now that’s not to say we can simply dismiss evil by attributing it to physical or psychological disorders, or to human rebellion against God, or to oppressive social structures. It is all of that at once and more: the Bible depicts the powers of evil in terms of what is contrary to God’s will for us: the domination, violence, destruction, and death at work in our world. Where ever greed, fear, desire, or hatred take over human life, there is evil and its impact is greater than the harm that our selfish impulses alone can inflict. We should and must take evil seriously.

At the same time, I would insist that focusing too much on the “power of evil” is just as much a mistake as trying to ignore it. This passage is not about the idea that there are “demons” who are lurking to overtake us at every turn. This passage is about the truth of the gospel: Jesus is the one appointed by God to bring the justice, peace, and freedom of the kingdom into this world. And that means that he has the power and authority to banish—simply by saying the word—anything that would prevent us from fully experiencing that new life. No “demon,” no “Satan,” can stand in the way of the power of Jesus to bring new life to us all.

In this story Jesus confirms the truth of the message he preached: “the kingdom of God has come near” (Mk. 1:15). He does this by “enacting” the kingdom of God. Here that means setting a man free from whatever was afflicting him. As we follow the gospel story, wherever Jesus is present, there is the presence of God’s kingdom dispelling all the powers of oppression, destruction, and death. The amazing things Jesus did serve as concrete examples of the message Jesus preached: where the presence of God’s kingdom is, there is healing, there is freedom, there is life, there is joy!

We must acknowledge the complicated and mysterious reality of evil in this life. And some of us bear the burdens inflicted on us by those oppressive powers all our lives. But from the perspective of the theological tradition of our Reformed heritage as Presbyterians, the primary truth about these things is that there is no contest between the power of God’s redeeming love and the power of evil.[2] The power of God’s love forces all the powers of domination and death to flee. Whether in this life or when “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Rev. 11:15) everything we fear, everything that creates despair, everything that leaves us feeling powerless will be banished and we will be released from everything that now binds us.

[2] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, rev. ed., 166-191 for an excellent overview of evil and God’s response to evil from a Reformed theological perspective.

Tuesday, November 05, 2019

God's Care

God’s Care

Luke 18:1-8[1]

There is a question that has haunted the human family since the beginning. We have wondered from ancient times whether there is a God, and whether that God cares at all about us. When science and the church taught that the earth was at the very center of the universe, it might have been a bit easier to believe in a God who cares for us. When we began to finally understand how small the earth is compared to the rest of creation, I think it became more difficult. Even before that, there have always been catastrophes and tragedies that made us question whether there is a God, and whether that God cares at all about us.

It’s a dilemma that has been expressed in the centuries-old question: If God is both loving and all-powerful, how can there be evil in the world? The presence of tragedy in our lives suggests that God loves us but he’s not powerful enough to stop these things from happening. Or it suggests that God is powerful enough to stop them, but since he doesn’t he must not be loving. This question was addressed in the Bible in various ways, most notably the book of Job. It’s a question that allows no rational explanation, because the only answer to the tragedies of life is to find a way to trust that God does indeed care about us.

That’s one aspect of our Gospel lesson for today. In it, Jesus tells a parable that Luke says was meant to encourage us “to pray and not to lose heart” (Lk. 18:1). The parable is about a woman who was a widow, very likely in danger of losing her livelihood because women could not inherit property. This is an important matter because in the Bible widows were to be the objects of special care and were to be protected from their oppressors. Unfortunately, not everyone who was a leader in Israel was motivated by the desire to follow God’s ways of compassion and true justice.

That is in fact the case in this parable. The woman is at the mercy of a corrupt judge, who had no interest in protecting her. According to the Bible, one who served in the role of a judge was to exercise their authority with fairness and compassion in imitation of God’s character. But this man is the opposite of what any judge was supposed to be. He doesn’t care about God, and he doesn’t care about people, either. Apparently, like many in his day, he had acquired this position by “pulling strings” or by bribing someone, or perhaps both. It seems clear that the only reason he was a judge was to enrich himself.

But this is no ordinary widow. She’s called the “importunate” widow in the title that’s traditionally assigned to this parable. That’s a word most of us don’t use, but it means “persistent,” “demanding” “unrelenting,” and even “annoying.” And that’s precisely what she was. She persisted relentlessly in demanding that this judge grant her what was rightfully hers, and she kept doing so until she annoyed him! He confessed, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming” (Lk. 18:4-5)! She simply would not give up until he made things right.

At this point Jesus contrasts the unjust judge with the God whom he has taught clearly is gracious, loving, and caring. Jesus asks a question: “will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?” (Lk. 18:7). Jesus answers his own question: “I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them” (Lk. 18:8). The point of the parable is a contrast: if a godless, inhumane judge will finally give in to a powerless widow’s unceasing requests for justice, how much more will our merciful and loving God “grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night.” God will make things right, ultimately if not immediately.

But that’s precisely wherein lies the rub! We have lots of affirmations in the Bible that God cares about us and will take care of us. We have promises that God will set things right. But life doesn’t always confirm those promises. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people. Sometimes bad people do bad things to good people. And when that happens we can wonder where God is. In fact, in the parable, instead of asking the question “Will he delay long?” some translate that verse as a concession: “even if he delays long”! That might just make more sense in the context. The problem with “praying and not losing heart” is when we do that and it seems like God “delays long,” or perhaps turns a deaf ear altogether! When life comes crashing down around us, we come back to the age-old question whether there is a God, and whether that God cares at all about us.

Unfortunately, I’m afraid that at times like those, our perspective can get quite narrow. All we can see is the hardship or tragedy we’re dealing with. And all we can ask is, “Why?” or, “How long?” stuck in our pain and our fears. But in this parable, I think Jesus wants to help us focus our attention elsewhere. He wants to remind us that we believe in a God who is a loving Father who knows what we need, who wants what is best for us, and who is working constantly for our good. And he does all of this despite our inability to understand our circumstances. There are simply some questions we may never be able to answer. But in this passage, Jesus redirects our questioning. He reminds us that the crucial question is, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” In this way, Jesus points us to what really matters: finding the faith to entrust ourselves to God’s care in all the circumstances of our lives.

The Waking Dreamer