Among the countless nuggets of wisdom I have received over the years from my father is this bit of gold- when you are reading your Bible and you come across something that makes you uncomfortable, resist the temptation to simply move on to something else. Where the Bible makes us uncomfortable is precisely where we need to slow down. It is compelling evidence of a specific weakness. When our thoughts or feelings bristle under God’s Word, He is right and we wrong.
That said, it is understandable that so many would recoil from God’s command that every living person in Canaan would be put to death as His people conquer the land. No mercy for those women and children, no compassion on the aged, God’s instructions were as clear as they were brutal.
Many outside the faith have planted their flag here, arguing that our God is immoral, monstrous. Many on the fringes of the faith perform sundry exegetical gymnastics to wiggle out from under the account. Many faithful believers are simply puzzled and embarrassed. The God we worship, however, the true and living God, did in fact give this command, and rightly so. If we would rightly worship Him, even here we would praise His name.
There are at least two reasons why God did this. The first is evidenced in what came to pass when Israel did not obey God in this command. God wanted the land cleared of all temptations to His people to turn from Him, His worship and His law. The Canaanites were a threat to the purity of God’s people. He had set them apart, consecrated them, adopted them. In giving this order, He was protecting them.
Joshua, for all his faithfulness, left the job unfinished. Once Israel was in the ascendency, once they felt safe, they began to think it might prove helpful to leave some of the Canaanites around, to fetch their water and chop their wood. The book of Judges reveals the results. Those few who were spared became a snare, just as God predicted they would. Soon, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
Of course one might understand this motive, and still be horrified. These Canaanites were not mere abstractions, but real people. Is it not still rather cruel to kill them all simply to seek to protect the moral purity of Israel? Perhaps, were that God’s only motive. The second reason God commanded them all to be put to death is because they were all, every man, woman and child of them, sinners. And the wages of sin is death. In short, God did this for the same reason He does all that He does, for the good of His people, and for His own glory.
It is because we are sinners , and because God so often showers us with grace, that we lose sight of the justice of God, and the blackness of sin. When we read about the execution of the Canaanites we ought not to ask, “How could God do this?” but “Why does He not kill us all?” The shocking part of the story of the conquest of Canaan is God’s love for His rebellious people, not His just wrath toward other rebels. From the moment of our conception we are all under God’s just death sentence. Every moment of every day is a momentary stay of execution. When we forget this truth we show ourselves to be the sinners we are. But praise His name, Christ came into the world to save sinners. He who knew no sin became sin for us, and died a sinner’s death that we might live. May we who are called by His name never lose either the amazing, or the grace, in amazing grace.
There is a sort of application of the Observer Effect that applies to the news of the day. Sometimes confused with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which argued that at the sub-atomic level we can either discern the speed of a particle or its location, but we can’t know both, the Observer Effect argues that observing scientific phenomena can impact what we are observing. It’s almost as if the electrons know we’re looking at them, and adjust their dance. With respect to the news of the day, we often hear this kind of argument- “Social ill x is no greater today than it was twenty years ago. It’s just reported more.” Or, “The recent slew of crime y is expected to create copy cat crimes.” It’s like the news knows we are watching. Sometimes the news is how we respond to the news.
In our day, however, the news is not just the news. The news is business. We are far less likely than our fathers were to tune in to respected journalists who at least sought to keep up an illusion of objectivity. We are far more likely to get our news from sources clearly identified with this political party or that, or worse still, from talk radio, or even comedy television. When news becomes commentary and commentary becomes business the greatest good is getting you to tune in. We, particularly those Christians who identify as political conservatives, forget that the goal of talk radio isn’t to inform us. We are not consumers of that product which is conservative commentary. We are instead the product being consumed by advertisers. The goal of the host is ultimately to get us to tune in, then to sell our ears to Madison Avenue. As such, no matter who is in office, no matter what is happening, the news is always the same, “The sky is falling.” Calamity is the order of the day not because we are in a peculiarly calamitous age, but because calamity sells.
There are, of course, plenty of things wrong with the world. We have corruption in high places. We live in an overleveraged, bubble bursting, upside down economic house of cards. Government is growing more intrusive, more bloated, more destructive with every passing election cycle. Our inner cities are cesspools of crimes, drugs, promiscuity and the death that comes with all of the above. All of these things, of course, we have a duty as believers to address. We have the solution to all of these ills, and are called to preach that solution, to disciple the nations. What we should not do, however, is panic. We shouldn’t even be surprised.
Consider the 14th century. Dangerous, attractive heresies were finding a foothold in the church. Like today. Faithful men of God were abused, harassed, even killed for their fidelity by men who believed themselves to be doing the work of God. Like today. Church leaders were publicly squabbling, exposing their own hunger for power and prestige, exposing to the watching world our shame. Like today. One third of the population went to an early grave through the scourge of the Black Plague. Like today, where one third of all babies, at least in these United States will be cut down by the blackest of scourges, abortion.
There is nothing new under the sun. Our hardships, and the wickedness from which they flow are not new things, not things unique to our age. They are the fruit of our fallen humanity. This, this is what comes of sin. How then should we now live?
Like Jesus did, by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4). Like Jesus does, bringing all things under subjection (I Corinthians 15:27). Like Jesus will do, handing it all back to the Father (I Corinthians 15:24). What we must do, in short, is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we forget about the wickedness all around us. Even less does it mean that we forget about the wickedness all inside us. It does mean that we do not worry like the Gentiles. We seek the kingdom precisely because we have a king, and He shall reign forever and ever.
This same Jesus reigned in the 14th century. He will still reign in the 24th century. His reign does not, for now, mean that there will not be death, corruption, heresies and murders. Neither, however, is it a mere hope that one day He will overcome. Rather, under His kingship His kingship goes forth to war. Things are not now as they should be. But things not being as they should be, is precisely as He would have things. For now.
Our calling as we fight faithfully beside our King against the world, our flesh and the devil, is to fight as those who are at peace. We fight with fervor, with fidelity, with faith, because we are of good cheer, knowing that He has already overcome the world. We live in interesting times indeed, because they are His times. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Richard Weaver first made a name for himself when he published his seminal work Ideas Have Consequences, a brief book whose ideas are still bringing forth consequences. He was to the secular academic world something of a Francis Schaeffer, introducing thousands to the concept of worldview, arguing that what we think about little things, more often than not, is determined by what we think about big things. Weaver demonstrated how a modernist worldview wasn’t something academia simply studied, but was instead something that shaped academia. Indeed, modernism is academia’s mother. You wouldn’t have the former did you not first have the latter. Schaeffer named many of the strongholds we are called to tear down, the sundry ism’s that we in the evangelical world carefully study, the same ones we once studiously ignored.
While I don’t deny the importance of the study of worldviews, indeed, I’ve written my own book, Tearing Down Strongholds, looking at ism’s, I’m afraid there just might be something modernist about our modern fascination with ism’s, whether we’re fighting or promoting them. The Bible does argue that we fight against every lofty thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, but on the other hand, it spends far more time worrying about sins on a grand scale. The children of Israel, for instance, are never sent a prophet who thunders against them because they have embraced behaviorism. He never destroys a city with fire and brimstone because the citizens there believed in utilitarianism. No, the problem, doesn’t have much academic allure. The problem was always idolatry. Nations rise and fall, cultures ebb and flow, based on this simple question- do they worship the true and living God? Worldviews may shape how we see the world, but theology shapes our worldviews.
Since the fall of Adam, wherever we were, there we would find the seed of our own destruction. But such doesn’t mean we can’t look for particular forces that toppled us in a particular direction. Some, for instance, see the practice of chattel slavery as the great moment of national apostasy. Others look to the Scopes Monkey trial as a watershed moment when we turned our backs on the God who had so blessed us. Still others think it all went wrong when prayer was removed from the state’s schools. A few might argue that it was January, 1973, when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade.
I’d like to posit a different theory. The handwriting was already on the wall, we had already been tried in the balance and found wanting, when our New England forbears jettisoned not just the rugged Calvinism that had sustained them in times of hardship, but when they began to embrace Unitarianism. Here the problem isn’t simply the playing fast and loose with the Bible. The problem wasn’t merely the Pelagian revival, the notion that culturally speaking, we could create the New Man, and usher in paradise on earth. The problem wasn’t the smug pride that drove the rejection not only of the Bible, but of the wisdom of our fathers in church history. The problem was this, we stopped worshipping the true and living God. The evil of Unitarianism is that it isn’t trinitarianism.
So now what do we do? We do not simply change our worldview. We do not simply elect better politicians. We do not merely refute Darwin, or B.F. Skinner, or Derrida. All of this is lopping the tops off of dandelions. No. There is but one way for us as individuals, as families, as churches, as a culture, to become once more pleasing in God’s sight. We must worship God in spirit and in truth, which means we worship Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We repent for our idolatry, and we turn away from it.
The historians will argue for centuries over what brought about the downfall of this once great land. Dissertations will be written, and tenures will be denied. Great schools of thought will do battle with competing schools. Arguments as elaborate and as rickety as the tower of Babel will rise and fall, like rising and falling empires. But there is but one thing that exalts a nation, one way for a nation to enjoy blessing from the true and living God, and that is that we should worship Him and Him alone. We will only enjoy His blessing when we pray, “And may the blessing of God Almighty- Father, Son and Holy Spirit, abide with you now and always.” So let it be done, for the sake of our fathers, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our nation, and for the glory of our Triune God.
It has long been my contention that the rampant skepticism about all things supernatural among the Reformed crowd is driven more by modernist assumptions than it is exegesis. We’re in a bit of a pickle, wanting to be true to God’s Word, and to be respectable in the eyes of the world. We affirm inerrancy but nuance our way out of the plain meaning of Genesis 1 and 2, so we don’t end up looking like those tacky fundamentalists. We agree that Jesus cast out demons, but deny demons have any dealings with humans in our day, so we don’t look like those nutty spiritual warriors. We affirm that God hears our prayers, but deny He ever actually does anything truly amazing for us, lest we look like those big haired televangelists.
I’m no fan at all of Kenneth Copeland. Everything I know about his theology I learned decades ago reading The Agony of Deceit, an expose on the heretical theology of most of our television preachers put together by my friend Dr. Michael Horton. An outstanding book, by the way. I confess as well to having my own doubts when a. Copeland seems to suggest he has the power to divert hurricanes and/or b. claims to have diverted a hurricane. Skepticism and its kissing cousin cynicism are my natural habitat after all.
Which is why God is working on me, and doing something even more astounding than diverting a hurricane- sanctifying me. He reminded me that there was a profound disconnect between my faith that He commands the wind and the waves and my disdain at the notion that a man’s prayers could stop a hurricane dead in its tracks. He showed me the ugliness of my sneering scorn and His call to godliness, to faith, to believing He delights not only to hear the prayers of His children, but to answer them.
This world does not belong to the scientists, the weather experts, nor to the scornful. Rather it belongs to the one who speaks, and reality happens., who not only blows the winds of hurricanes, but throws the swirling tumult of galaxies. And He has promised that He will give it to the trusting, the humble, that the meek will inherit the earth.
We ought to pray with all the innocence of children, asking our Father to quell storms, to heal bodies ravaged by illness, to make it snow in August, to end every war and to fill every hungry belly. And let us do so with no shame, no blushing, no crossed fingers to prove to the cool kids we’re still with it. Let us rise up out of the seat of the scornful. Let us be planted by the rivers of water, our roots reaching so deep into the good soil that not even the greatest storm, should He determine such should come our way, can move us. Let us bring forth the fruit of faith. Let us ask that He will prosper whatsoever we do.
