It is natural, when confronted with hardship, whether it be personal, national, even global, to wonder where the hand of God is in the hardship. When that hardship hits us or those whom we love, we often fall into fear that somehow this means God is angry or unhappy with us. When it hits those whom we hate, we often fall into an ungodly joy that somehow this means God is angry or unhappy with our enemies.
This much we know- God is sovereign over all things. If it happens, He ordained it to happen. God tells us just this in -I am the Lord, and there is no other;
There is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me, That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting That there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness,
I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things’ (verses 5-7).
It is a short, but treacherous step to go from affirming God brings something to pass, however, to claiming to know why He brings something to pass. God ordained that the man born blind in would be born blind. But Jesus explicitly denies that God ordained this because of the sin of the man or his parents. Rather He ordained it that Jesus might manifest the glorious truth that He is the light of the world. God’s ways are not our ways. We must not presume to know His ways.
Could God be judging people or nations with the coronavirus? Of course He could. He is God, and He does indeed send judgment. He might, however, have a different goal in mind. Perhaps He has sent the virus to demonstrate to the watching world the compassion of His people. There may be a day when Christians are not just the first ones to respond, but are the only ones to respond. And such would glorify Christ.
Of course God is not inefficient. He is not consigned to pursuing one goal only. He could be judging people and nations with the virus. He could be showing believers and unbelievers alike that their false god, the state, is weak and anemic and can’t protect them. He could be reminding us all that death is coming for us all, and that what follows can be far worse. He could be providing opportunity for believers to reflect the glory of Christ in serving those in danger. He could be teaching His saints, if the virus isn’t as bad as some are making it out to be, one more lesson in how not to get caught up in media driven hype, or, if it is worse than it is being made out to be, He could be teaching His saints to not have our heads in the sand.
The glory of God’s Word is that we don’t have to read the tea leaves of current events to discern our calling. It, the Bible, equips us for every good work, including the good work of discerning our calling. Which means we can turn off the news and still know just what we are supposed to do- disciple the nations, bring all things under the subjection of Christ, visit widows and orphans in their trouble, rejoice and give thanks, to rest in His victory, to store up treasures in heaven. If we do these things, and the virus disappears, we will continue to do these things. If we do these things and coronavirus kills us all, we will die as faithful soldiers. Be of good cheer. He has already overcome the world.
Confidence in the victory of Jesus, knowing He is bringing all things under subjection, knowing that His kingdom, that rock uncut by human hands is covering all the earth is our very hope. There is no line that separates His promise to cleanse each of us from all unrighteousness and His promise to bring all things under subjection. Some sinners and some institutions will be destroyed (one does not redeem brothels or opium dens; rather one destroys them). Others will be remade.
That remaking, however, is not merely future. The Man will come around, to be sure, but the Man comes around now. He is at work now and all His work lasts forever. What He polishes, whether it is on the ship, on the lifeboat, or at the very bottom of the ocean is not mere brass, but gold that will withstand the refiner’s fire that burns away all wood, hay and stubble. He comes around now in His means of grace now. That is, as His Spirit works in me to mortify my flesh, this is eschatological labor. As His Spirit remakes me into the image of the Son, this is eschatological labor.
Believing in His victory can carry with it a temptation toward pride, and toward strategic shortcuts. That temptation is not beaten, however, by accepting defeat, but by remembering that the victory is His. My humility ought to be about what I can contribute to the battle, not about the scope of His victory. Jesus wins, after all, every battle, even those we think are lost.
The kingdom does not, in the end, come through our strategies. It does not come through building coalitions, by shrewd and clever alliances. No. Jesus tells us that His kingdom comes as His will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Our simple calling then is to obey. When we cultivate the fruit of the Spirit, when we encourage one another toward righteousness, when we serve the widow and the orphan, when we love our neighbor, we are adding jewels to the very walls of heaven. He may call us to die for Him, which is victory if we obey. He may call us to prosper for Him, which is victory if we obey. He will not, however, call us to guess the future. He simply calls us to obey. We are in the battle for eternity. Everything is at stake. But be of good cheer. For the sum of the matter is as clear as it is simple- fear God and obey all that He commands.
When God calls us out of the world He does so not to abandon the world, but to redeem it. We conquer by retreat. When we are a set apart people we are at our brightest, at our most savory. We are not then separating to wait for the end. Rather we separate that there might be multiple new beginnings, that the lost might be found, the elect gathered from the four corners of the world. We don’t fight like they fight. We don’t fail to fight as they fail to fight. Instead when the man comes around, we follow Him into battle, as a body, as a people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.
Eschatology, we would be wise to remember, isn’t really about the end times. It is more about the End. That is, it is less about how things pan out, more about the One whom everything is about. The kingdom exists for the sake of the King, not the other way around. We have been bought by this King. We are His bondservants, and the soldiers in His army. Which is why we fight the good fight. Not for our sake. Not for our glory. Not even ultimately for our friends and loved ones in the foxhole with us. We fight for Him. Our whys reach their end in Him. For the glory of God, and for the building of His kingdom.
I don’t know. More importantly, neither does anyone else. The better question is, why would anyone think anyone could know? Though they have been with us for some time I’m seeing more and more quizzes on sundry social media feeds promising to tell me not just what pizza topping I am but which castaway on Gilligan’s Island, which 80’s pop diva, which former Secretary General of the United Nations. I’m not such a grumpus as to argue that there is something sinful about taking such quizzes. Nor am I inclined to believe that anyone takes these quizzes too seriously. I do believe, however, that one reason we are tempted to take the time to take such quizzes is wrapped up in what I call authority lag.
The internet is unlike any other publishing form that came before it. Perhaps its two biggest qualities are its ease of entrance and its reach. Before the advent of the internet publishing was a rather elite club. To be able to publish one had to have access to some seriously expensive hardware. Whether in print or through the airwaves media required technology to mass produce ideas, and to find paying markets to receive them and therefore called for trained professionals to produce things. No one ever found a teenager in a basement and gave him the keys to the New York Times, or FoxNews.
Which, of course, we are all well aware of. We snicker about the basement dwelling internet “writer.” We’re amused that no matter how bizarre, one can find every imaginable theory expounded and defended somewhere in cyber-space. But that is where the disconnect is. If we really believed that the person behind every website we visited is some socially awkward kid, would we spend as much time as we do online? I mean, we know objectively that Buzzfeed does not hire Ph.D’s in psychology who also have masters degrees in pop culture to write the “Which Flintstone are you?”. They don’t do double blind tests to make sure that their quiz questions truly reflect Wilma’s personality.
While we are plenty cynical at a conscious level, it’s at the subconscious level where we let faux authority slip through. We’re used to thinking that what we read, especially if it has nice design elements, has authority. We’re used to thinking that an organization called The Institute for Character Discernment must have an office somewhere with trained staff. When it’s really just some guy in his basement, who hopes you won’t know he’s just a guy in a basement. (Not me though. I work upstairs. You can take me seriously.)
On the internet it’s just us. It’s not a newsstand, but a coffee shop, not a newspaper but a diary, not the news, but home movies. My advice, and of course, it’s just me, is that we should be a bit more skeptical about the credentials of others, a bit more slow to lend credence to the incredulous.
Some years back I participated on a Christian college campus in an intriguing discussion. I had been invited, due to my public labors on behalf of the unborn, to join a panel asking something along these lines, “Why is the slaughter of the unborn so low on the radar of so many evangelicals? Why do we get our dander up over human trafficking, but not so much over abortion?”
Before I get to the remarks I went to share, let’s make one obvious thing perfectly clear. Human trafficking is wicked, vile, nauseating evil. It is not my intention to weigh the relative demerits of these wrongs, but rather to explore the disparity in our outrage and involvement.
I suggest two reasons for this disparity. First, abortion is near, human trafficking far. Now I’m not denying that human trafficking happens here in these United States, or that the murder of the unborn doesn’t happen overseas. The nearness of which I speak is more social than geographic. Evangelicals are far more likely to have procured an abortion (one in six abortions in the US are procured by a professing evangelical) or have a friend who has done so than they are to have been enslaved in prostitution. You might think that the more distant the outrage the less, rather than the more, we would be outraged. The trouble is, because we are sinners, our outrage exists more for ourselves than for the suffering. When the outrage is distant I can feel angry, morally superior, and never have to actually do anything. Distant outrage is the path of least resistance. My dander and self-esteem climb at the same pace.
Which brings us to the second reason. We have no neighbors that stand up for sex trafficking. Indeed they are the ones most loudly objecting to sex trafficking. We are surrounded, however, by neighbors who believe abortion is a virtual sacrament, a holy act of feminine liberation. Moloch is the God our neighbors worship, and they don’t take kindly to us when we speak ill of him. Because sex trafficking truly is evil from a Christian perspective, choosing it as our causis belli doesn’t require us to betray our Lord. And it allows us to stand shoulder to shoulder with our unbelieving neighbors.
In short, with abortion we might be called to action, to do the unpleasant work of actually ministering to our neighbors by calling them to repentance, by going to spiritual war with them. We might have to get involved with the abortion vulnerable, in our neighborhoods and on our campuses. With abortion, in turn, we face the unpleasant prospect of being rejected by our neighbors, thought uncouth, backwards, fundamentalists, even mean spirited.
Fighting the scourge of abortion begins with tearing down our own high places- our worship of comfort and acceptance. Fighting abortion requires us not to look at a news report and judge but to look in the mirror and repent. Lord, give us the grace to love You and to be hated by the world. For the least of these, Your brothers.
You know it’s the right career for you if you can’t not do it. And so it is for both the aspiring writer and the working writer. Writers write whether anyone reads or not. It’s a compulsion, because the words just keep coming. Those who write best, however, don’t write for the sake of writing, but for the sake of the reading. That is, we write with this purpose in mind- serving our readers. We want to bless our readers, to help them grow in grace and wisdom, to, for the Christian writer, praise Him more joyfully, follow Him more diligently, believe Him more passionately, reflect Him more clearly.
I published my first book, Money Matters, with Tyndale House 35 years ago. Since then I have published more than a dozen more. I’ve written for World, Chronicles, The Freeman, Homeschooling Today, Tabletalk and many more. I know how to get from inspiration to completion, and how to help others do the same. At my company, The Purpose Driven Write, I help writers not merely find their voice, but find their audience. I provide developmental editing services, coaching, copyediting and ghostwriting. I’m looking for writers and aspiring writers who want to tell not their story, but His story, and how He has changed them. I’m looking for those who have experienced the glorious truth that Jesus changes everything and who want to be used by Him to change others.
If you have a manuscript, a project, even simply a dream, let’s talk about how we can drive what you have to the “write” destination. I am happy to provide references from satisfied clients, samples of the work I have done and free estimates for the services you are interested in. I can be reached at hellorcjr@gmail.com. It’s time to fulfill your purpose and get your message to those who need to hear it.
Witches are real, and witches are evil. To be sure, while warts, brooms and cauldrons are also real the caricature that brings them all together is rather far from the truth. God, in His infinite wisdom, told His people Israel not to suffer a witch to live (Exodus 22:18). Our fathers the Puritans followed the same perspective. They rightly saw witchcraft as a great evil. They, in accordance with their times, saw it also as a capital offense. Neither of these, however, is the source of the great horror of the Salem Witch Trials.
We are all so comfortable scolding our fathers for their folly before us. Of course they are guilty of folly, not because they came before us, but because they are our fathers. They act foolishly because they are what we are, fools. We are, if outside the kingdom, outraged over the witch trials, and if inside the kingdom, deeply embarrassed by them. What though are we embarrassed for?
Not, in my judgment, for finding witchcraft evil. Though I believe it is not the function of the state to punish witches, I don’t think the greatest evil either was that our fathers thought otherwise. No, the great evil was the manner in which the trials were held. The injustice was less in the sentencing, more in the means by which the victims were found guilty. The failure was a failure to follow biblical and humane rules of evidence. Unverifiable, unanswerable, subjective evidence was used to destroy the innocent.
We, of course, have grown past that. Especially in the church we have learned from this black eye, this skeleton in our closet. Now we insist in judging the accused decently and in order. We’d never fall for, “I know she’s a witch because she gave my sow the stink-eye and a week later all her piglets were dead.” We now know that a people wicked enough to practice witchcraft are a people wicked enough to falsely accuse others of witchcraft, and so no longer presume the guilt of the accused based simply on the testimony of one person. We’ve grown past the habit of hearing testimony from those who are beyond the injunctions of Deuteronomy 19 wherein God’s Word says that the man who perjures himself will receive the punishment the accused would have received had he been guilty. Isn’t it great to be in a world so much more careful and biblical than the world of our Puritan forebears?
Except, of course, that we’re not in a better world, because we are not better people. Every kind of bogus evidence received in Salem is daily received in our modern courts of public opinion. We receive evidence from cowards who in their anonymity will not come into the light. We fall into the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, believing that because B happened after A that A is the cause of B. We reach conclusions without hearing a defense. We leap from the obvious truth that X is a wicked and horrible crime and a sin against God to the unjustified conclusion that Pastor So-and-so must be guilty because he’s been accused of X. And we insist that his accusers, false or not, must be protected at all costs.
We all, including our Puritan fathers, have our blind spots. But we are never more blind than when we see the blind spots of others and insist we’ve grown past our own. Lynch mobs are still with us. Kangaroo trials still happen. And we’re all all too ready to be judge, jury and executioner. Until, of course, we find ourselves the accused.
