It may well be in the calculus of evil that the only character faring worse than a Nazi is the Pharisee. These were the original black hats. In each of the gospel accounts they are the no-accounts, the very foil of Jesus Himself. We, because we are sinners just like them, ascribe to the Pharisees every conceivable sin that we think ourselves not guilty of. We may have to confess to this sin or that, but at least, we tell ourselves, we aren’t like those guys. In our scapegoating narrative we think that when Jesus showed up the Pharisees hated Him for the simple reason that He was good and they evil. He walked down the street, and they hissed and sputtered. He healed a puppy and they kicked it.
The truth is that the Pharisees did hate Jesus, and He rightly isn’t known for showing them a great deal of grace. He called them out for their hypocrisy. He exposed their inner tombs. But the hatred they felt for Him wasn’t mere sour grapes at His approval rating, nor was it as principled as mere evil versus good. It was rather more craven. They hated Jesus not because He called them names, but because He threatened their security, prestige and income. He was going to ruin everything they had worked so hard for, and get everybody killed.
The Pharisees had brokered a rather uneasy peace between the powers of Rome, and their own people. Rome, you will remember, had no great desire to remake the cultures their army had conquered. Any nation willing to submit to Rome’s military and political authority could go on about their business. Israel, however, wasn’t a nation given to separating their political and theological loyalties. Thus the rise of the Zealots, that sect who, in the spirit of the Maccabees, sought to remove Rome’s yoke. Thus the uprising in 70 AD that led to the utter destruction of Jerusalem. It was the Pharisees who kept their finger in that dyke. And they made a decent living doing it. It was Jesus, however, who kept poking at the levee.
His popularity, His talk of the kingdom, His affirmation that He was in fact the Messiah, this threatened the uneasy peace. If the people got behind Joseph’s son, Rome would awake, and start killing Jews indiscriminately, not bothering to distinguish the Pharisee party from the Jesus party. This is how Caiaphas came, in a moment of treachery, to speak a gospel truth when he said, “nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish” (). The Pharisees hated Jesus not because He made them look bad with the people, but because He made them all look bad to Rome.
We would be wise to remember this, for the pattern remains. When persecution comes it comes first not from the state, but from that part of the church that seeks to appease the state. The zealous, the faithful, those unwilling to confess that Caesar is Lord will be turned over to Caesar by the feckless, the faithless, those who fear man rather than God. It is those who aspire to maintain respectability, those who remove the gospel’s offense, those who exchange their prophet’s mantle for something more hip, these are they who betray Christ, and His bride. Persecution, in the end, doesn’t divide the church, but exposes where the line is between wheat and chaff. In times of persecution the true church may be burned, but those who escape will only be blown away.
I opened them. One gentleman, in response to my request for feedback on Monday’s podcast, suggested I do so, and that pushed me off the fence I’ve been sitting on. That said, I could certainly climb back on, and then fall off the other side. In short, don’t make me regret this.
I have observed two facts over the past several years. First, I like to visit blogs that allow for and have actual comments. I was a regular visitor to Challies, Blog and Mablog and Out of Our Minds Too. All three ditched their comment sections and my visits plummeted. Second, men who had great success as bloggers decided to ditch their comments. Hmm.
In lieu of a bunch of rules attempting to pin down comment no-no’s, which would likely be harder than determining what pass interference is, we’re going to start with this simple rule drawn from the world shaping wisdom from the sages of San Demas- Be excellent to each other. Look at our open comments like the “Quiet Game.” Let’s see how long we can keep them open. As you are typing out your comments I want you to see my finger, twitching, sweating, hovering over the “Close Comments” button. Don’t be the guy that ended the game. Clear?
I will never forget my first published piece. It was a letter to the editor of the Ligonier Echo, the weekly newspaper of the small town wherein I grew up. I was all of 10 years old at the time, but that didn’t keep me from reaching great peaks of moral indignation. I thundered from my mountain top. I vituperated. I fumed and steamed. My crusade was not unlike Greta’s, nor was the source of my rage so different. In my case it was Miss Maile. She was my 5th grade teacher at the toney private school I attended on a scholarship. She was not the warmest teacher in the world, but she was interesting. And committed. To turning us all into hard leftists just like her. We learned socialism in her classroom through Man: A Course of Study, a curriculum infamous for its political bias. We learned environmentalism as she read to us Watership Down.
We learned journalistic activism as she encouraged the whole class to write letters to the editor opposing a proposed nuclear power plant in our back yard, the Donegal Energy Park. It was, in fact, a class wide project. She, in short, used us, our innocence and our ignorance to score points in a political battle. All this more than forty years ago.
Miss Maile, like Greta’s teachers, understood that education is discipleship. There is no set of morally neutral facts that we can safely ask the state to instruct our children in. Because every education will ever and always induct its students into a worldview. That’s the very goal of education- instilling our deepest convictions in those under our charge. Heck, I’m doing it right now. I’m trying to help you, to instruct you, to inform you that Greta isn’t an anomaly, a glitch in the system. She’s not even a feature of the system. She is the platonic ideal of their goal. She is their omega. She is their success, not because she thinks for herself, not because she is articulate. Not even because she is passionate. She is their success precisely because she doesn’t think for herself, precisely because she spews forth their message, precisely because she has no passion of her own, just their fevered passions.
Greta, in short, is a puppet, Pinocchio telling lies for our entertainment. She is dancing on the stage set up for her at Vanity Fair. Our job isn’t, because we do not share her views, to be aghast and appalled at her views. Our job is not to look down our noses at her. Our job instead is to feel sorry for her, and her parents, and more important still, to look to our own children, to see how much they are being shaped by the cookie cutters on the factory floor. This is not a time to score political points by laughing at the show. It’s time to check our children for strings, and, if we find them, to cut them off mercilessly.
The world, Paul tells us, knows what’s coming. not only highlights the universal guilt of all men, but ironically defines that guilt as the denial of what we know. We know that there is a God, and that we fail to meet His standard. We know, in short, that we are in trouble. But, we seek to suppress that truth in unrighteousness. The lexical background of the Greek word “suppress” suggests something like a heavy, metal spring that we try to hold down as long as we can. I believe, however, that we get closer to the spirit of our sin if we see ourselves, as God is speaking to us, running about with our fingers in our ears shouting “LA LA LA LA LA I can’t hear you.”
Consider how unbelievers in the west tend to live their lives. They may not have their fingers in their ears, but they likely have their earbuds in their ears. We surround ourselves constantly with noise. At work we have talk radio on. In the car we play music. When we get home we turn on the television where we are distracted with our eyes as well as our ears. We hyper-schedule our days, moving from one thing that demands our attention to another, our smart phones buzzing and beeping our daily orders. We don’t, in the west, take the time to think, because we don’t want to face not just the hard lesson of life under the sun- life is short and then you die, but the much harder lesson of life lived under the Son- life is short, then you die, and hell lasts forever.
We who have, by His grace been redeemed, however, our lives are much different, aren’t they? We don’t need the constant noise of pop culture to drown out our own thoughts. We are busy speaking to one another in Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. We are meditating day and night on the glory, the richness, the beauty of the Word of God. We, who have already received the Pearl of Great Price, who have been promised eternal blessing and the drying of every tear want nothing more than opportunity for silence so that we can enter into the fullness of the gospel of our Lord. We want quiet that we might contemplate the peace. We seek out our prayer closets that we might give thanks.
Wait. Is that what we do? Is that how we live? Or are we instead mirror images of our neighbors? We might, if we are pious, order our pop culture from the PG side of the menu. We might carve out twenty minutes of quiet for prayer and contemplation. But we still are consumed with consuming pop culture, with surrounding ourselves with noise, and for much the same reason.
Now to be sure we know we will not suffer for all eternity. That is our neighbor’s fear, not our own. The fears that plague us are much more tame. We worry about our retirement accounts. We worry about our job security. We worry about the economy and the Middle East. We worry about our reputations, what people say and think about us. We worry so much that we worry about what we’ll worry about when we get to heaven.
The heathen know from creation itself that their Creator will bring judgment down on them. We on the other hand, have been given a book. This book tells us about His grace. It tells us about all that is ours in Christ, that everything that He brings into our lives is for our good and His glory. It tells us on every page that He loves us with an everlasting love, and that nothing can thwart His will. Which means we should be at peace. We should set aside our worries. We should remove our fingers from our ears that we might hear the music of the rolling spheres magnifying His name. We should no longer cry out LA LA LA LA I can’t hear you, but “Speak Lord, for your servant hears.”
What we need, as we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, is to be still, and know that He is God. We don’t need to turn up the volume of His revelation, but turn off the noise. We don’t need Him to make bigger promises. We need to have eyes to see what He has already promised. We don’t need better, cleaner noise than the heathen. We need silence.
When we stop, when we take a deep breath, when we rest, when we put to death our vain desires, vain imaginings, vain distractions, when in fact we not only quit the rat race, but finish the race He has set before us, when we draw our last breath, we will hear with perfect clarity what He has been saying to us from the moment we were reborn- This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. And then, heavenly choirs of angels promising, “And He shall reign forever and ever.” Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.
Life in a blender, as those who regularly listen to the Jesus Changes Everything podcast know, isn’t always easy. There is confusion and danger at every moment. Swimming against the churning swirl is the only way to stay above the slicing blades, and it can grow tiring. Which is why it’s so important to celebrate every moment of victory.
A few days ago one of our sons was having a hard time. That hard time expressed itself in anger, harsh words, defiant behavior, and an outpouring of tears. It was like nothing I had ever scene, from him or any other child. I spoke with the boy, and I administered discipline to him. I hugged him, and reminded him that I love him, and always will, no matter what. Which is just where it would have ended, had it just been me.
But Lisa. My precious wife, the boy’s loving mother literally took our son by the hand, and led him out on a walk. She spoke to him tenderly. She helped him find voice to his frustrations, and led him to the wisdom of God’s Word. She assured him of her love for him, his secure position in our family, and of God’s love for him. She brought joy back to his face, and peace back to his heart.
None of which surprises me in the least. Because she has, time and again, done much the same thing for me, her husband. She, in fact, did much the same for me before I was her husband. As she did with our son, she saw into me; she discerned in me secrets I shared with no one. And instead of using that insight to beat me down, she used it to discern how to build me up. Better still, in both instances, with our son and with me, she brings her insights and requests before our loving Father in prayer.
Ladies, you will serve your families well, and the kingdom well, if you will do the same with your husband and your children. Men, you will serve your families well, and the kingdom well, if you will rejoice over your wife as she brings her giftings to bear on your family. Blending families- be a family. Do not let the unique challenges that come with life in a blender let you forget the calling of all families, to stick together. Celebrate the grace of God in putting the perfect balance of ingredients into that blender, and mix until smooth. Then, drink deep of whirled peace.
Dear, your husband loves you. Your children love you. Let’s keep swimming against the current together, leading our little homeschool of fish. Let’s praise the One who redeems us, who brought us together, and who is leading us to the eternal land of rest, back to the garden. Worthy is the Lamb!
