Rejection

Let me first say that one will not fully comprehend the Holy Scriptures by reading it through once. Of course, that task is impossible if it is not even read at all.  In fact, my experience is such that after numerous times reading it, there are still issues, stories, and nuances that capture my attention and even my imagination to varying degrees.  This time is no different.  Our church began reading "The Bible in 90 Days" again at the beginning of the month, and like in past times, there are new things that stand out in the readings.

What has really stood out in my mind thus far, from the very beginning account of creation and fall, up through the Patriarchs, the constant flirtation with false gods made of stone, clay, and wood, the constant turning away from God toward these idols through the Exodus, the conquest, the judges, and even into the first kings - Saul and David - is the question "what was so appealing about these false gods that people would turn away from God and toward them in the first place?"  Honestly, with the promises of God, it seems that rejecting those promises is just plain silly.  And yet the Bible's history is replete with example after example of just that:  the rejection of God for the pursuit of anything and everything that is NOT God in the peoples' lives.  Come to think of it, the situation today is no different.

The answer to my question has come to me in a couple of different ways.  The first is seen in the last line of Judges, where it states "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit."    It was not about a collective good, or a common good, or appealing to a higher purpose.  It was only about doing what each person thought was right in their own eyes.  It was only about satisfying their own whims and desires.  Or there is Proverbs 14:12 - "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."   The "choice" in life is either to follow our own ambitions, (narcissistic self absorption) or to follow a higher purpose that comes from somewhere else - namely from God.  the false gods of the Old Testament (and even those we have today) do nothing more than fulfill our own selfish ambitions and desires.  They truly are gods created in our image, rather than us being created in the one true God's image.   That is the choice:  to follow our own ways or to follow the ways of God.  Oddly enough, the founders of America recognized this great truism in the appeal that all rights and liberties are granted by God.  The church, too, is at its' most prosperous when it also recognizes that it serves, worships, and follows a higher purpose established by God and fulfilled in Christ.  When church or society rejects that, it amounts to nothing more than turning to false gods of wood, stone, or clay.  And like history, which is replete with examples of the troubles and disasters that come from such narcissistic behavior, we face the same troubles and disasters ahead should we persist in doing here as each person sees fit in their own eyes.


Today is one of the more obscure commemorations for the protestant church:  the Martyrdom of the early church father Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna.  On this day in the year 165 AD, he was burned alive as an old man for refusing to recant his belief in the triune God.  In an age that abounded in everyone doing as they saw fit in their own eyes, he was one who stood against that.  In today's age where the same conditions exist - everyone follows what they think is right in their own eyes - we need more Polycarps:   Those who are willing to die themselves because of what they believe rather than telling others they must die for their beliefs.  We need more people who appeal to a universal right and wrong, rather than a self-defined version of what right and wrong might be to them.
Now you may be one who doesn't buy into any such notion of a higher power or being.  You may reject the idea of God outright.  You may very well believe in yourself alone.  Yet look at history, and how well that has worked when everyone else does the same.  There has got to be some common good that is NOT defined by the selfish desires of humanity.  That collective good must come from somewhere else, and the founding fathers nailed it when they identified that at least our lives, our freedoms, and our happiness ultimately come from God.  Which god, you may ask?  How about the only god who recognizes the inherent ability of humanity to do it's own thing only.  How about that same God who knows we cannot save ourselves because of our selfishness, and therefore provides salvation for us not based on anything we can do, but on what He has done for us.  Of course I'm talking about the Christian faith.  It is the ONLY faith in which God saves us in spite of ourselves, because in the end, we cannot. 

Doing our own thing only satisfies our own selfish desires.  It's time to stop rejecting the idea of a universal truth from God - the God who saves us through Christ - and to start once again seeing the big picture.  That big picture includes our eventual demise if we persist in only doing what satisfies ourselves alone.  These are my reflections this Thursday, the commemoration of Polycarp, Martyr.

Saint Valentine: The Raw Story

It is just fascinating how much of our society, our worldview, and our customs stem from faith in the triune God.  Take today, for example:  it's all about flowers, candy hearts, red, love, etc.  Right?  Well, as the late Rev. Richard John Neuhaus once said:  "In the absence of truth, power is the only game in town."    We are not empowered by such things today, rather we are held captive to them by the lack of truth in understanding our own history.

You see, Valentine is really not a love story, nor is it particularly appealing.  It was not a holiday created by the greeting card companies, (though in the absence of truth it has certainly been perverted by them), nor is it a holiday at all, really.  It is a commemoration of the gruesome death of one of the church's saints.  Valentine (the real Valentine - now a Saint of the Christian church) lived his life during rather tumultuous times.  What little we actually know of his life is often supplemented with legend, but there is enough to know to point us to a basic picture of the man, apart from legend.

So who was Valentine?  He was a priest and physician in Rome, during the reign of Emperor Claudius II.  Rome was still very much a pagan empire, and polygamy, polyamory, and all manner of sexual expression abounded.  Valentinus the priest advocated for Christian couples to A:  Get married in the church; B:  only marry one person, in accord with the instructions of sacred Scripture; and C:  Remain faithful within that marriage, thus going against the societal norms.  The church has believed  and taught since the time of Christ that marriage was to be between one man and one woman only.  The emperor was neither Christian nor held to Valentine's views of marriage.

So when several bloody battles were fought, and the emperor found it hard to find and recruit new young men who would leave their wives and families to fight, he ordered that all weddings be cancelled.   Valentine, as a Christian and a priest, could not obey this order because of faith and conscience.   Yet because marriage was now illegal, they were conducted secretly.  Eventually, of course, Valentine was arrested, and while in prison was tortured extensively.  Many legends surround him during his imprisonment.  Eventually, however, he was sentenced to a 3 part execution of first being beaten, then being stoned, and finally being beheaded, which was carried out on February 14 269  AD.  His remains exist today at the church of St. Praxedes in Rome, where they were purportedly  transferred centuries ago.

Much of what else is believed about Valentine is more in the realm of legend than fact, including how this Saint's day morphed into its' generic and (dare I say it?) pagan meaning today.  This would also include a purported letter to his sister shortly before his death, in which he signed it "with love, your Valentine."  And from this legend, and his defense of Christian marriage comes a generic nondescript holiday today that is all about "love," candies, flowers, and the like.

I for one would "love" to see it return to it's origins, because at the heart of it all is Christ.  And if we truly want to talk of love today, all of our imperfect love, and all of our misconceptions on it are completely overshadowed by the perfect love of God in Christ Jesus.  If we want to celebrate love, and if we want to tout it as an extreme virtue that, as a recent campaign slogan said "trumps hate," then this would be the perfect place to start.  It was Jesus, after all, who said "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you..."  So yes:  Love one another, not in some generic sense but as we have first been loved by God.  Happy Saint Valentine's day.

Judges and Kings - Parts 7 and 8

To "catch up" on the Bible's Story, the reader can  look at previous installments:  Part 1, Parts 2 and 3, Part 4, and Parts 5 and 6.

The next book of the Bible after Joshua and the conquest of Canaan (the land promised to Abraham’s descendants as one of the three parts of God’s covenant with Abraham - Genesis 12, 15), is the book of Judges.  The question of a “human” ruler or king has come up, and as the later book of 1 Samuel hints at, Israel was supposed to acknowledge God as their king (8:7).  Here, however, fresh off of an incomplete campaign to rid the land of all foreigners, the book of Judges shows us repeatedly how in this instance: a) Israel sins (involving worship of the Baals and other pagan fertility gods), b) God sends various groups of foreigners in who fight against Israel, c) the people cry out in anguish, asking for someone to save them, and d) God raises up a “judge” (“judge” here refers to a warrior/leader, rather than our common understanding of someone who presides over a court room), and the judge rescues Israel according to God’s plan.

Perhaps the best way to summarize the book of Judges, as well as the newly formed kingdom of Israel, is to look at the very last verse of the book itself:  “In those days, Israel had no king, and everyone did as he saw fit.”  (21:25).  And though the “judges” were raised up by God to save Israel and restore the kingdom, the pattern of everyone “doing as they saw fit” demonstrates the Biblical nature of sin itself: for a person to follow their own ways and not the ways of God.

The book of Judges chronicles this repeating pattern and how such well known Judges as Othniel (3:7-11), Ehud (3:12-30), Deborah (ch. 4-5), Gideon (ch. 6-8), Jephthah (10:6-12:7), and Samson (ch. 13-16) carry out God’s ultimate plan and drives back such ethnic groups as the Moabites, the Canaanites, Midianites, Ammonites, and Philistines.  Other, lesser known Judges are also chronicled in the book.  It is noteworthy to see that there was a female Judge - Deborah, who was originally a prophetess for the people.  It is also worth mentioning that the beginning of every account of each Judge begins with stating that the Israelites “did evil in the eyes of the Lord” following the previous Judge, such as with the beginning of Gideon’s rule (ch. 6).

Many people might recall the story of the Judge, Samson (ch.13-16), who had great strength and had been set apart from birth, much the way John the Baptist from the Gospels had.  Samson was a man of considerable strength - one might call him the “strongest man in the world.”  Unfortunately, he was also gullible and succumbed to his wife, Delilah’s persistent attempts at trying to learn the secret of his strength to betray him to the Philistines (ch. 16). After several failed attempts by her to betray him, he finally admitted to her that the secret of his great strength lie in his head, which had never before been shaved or trimmed.  She had his braids shaved off (16:19), and he was defeated then by the Philistines.

Another and perhaps lesser known Judge was Jephthah - also an example to us of how we should think before speaking or making a promise.  He was “a mighty warrior” (11:1) and after Israel turned again to false idols, cried out to God for help, and made him their Judge, he made a vow that he would sacrifice the first thing to walk out of his house upon his return, should the Lord make him victorious in battle.  God did make him victorious, and the first “thing” to come out of his house was his very own daughter.  Ironically, it was the daughter who insisted that he needed to keep his vow to God (11:36).

Sadly, though, this pattern of everyone doing what was right in their own eyes and “doing evil in the sight of the Lord” continues, despite the “reign” of several Judges over the early years of Israel as a nation.

        If the time of the Judges demonstrated Israel “doing their own thing,” the time of the Kings showed the extent of them failing to listen to God.  Following the time of the Judges, Israel still clamored for a true “king” to lead them, despite that it has been God all along telling them that he was their king, and they needed no other (1 Samuel 8:7).  Their problem continued to be the first commandment - they could never seem to get over worshiping the false gods of their neighbors and the foreigners in their land.  God sent them a king anyhow, with the warning to the people, “if you persist in doing evil, both you and your king will be swept away.” (1 Samuel 12:25).  Thus begins the line of the Kings of Israel.

The books of 1 and 2 Samuel tell the stories of Saul and David.  Following Saul, who was eventually rebuked by God (1 Kings 15:26), comes the great kingship of David (2 Samuel 2), who is known in part for his battle with Goliath (1 Samuel 17).  Though he honors God in establishing Jerusalem as the spiritual center and trusting in God’s power, even David was not without troubles.  Eventually his sin compounded as he committed adultery with Bathsheba, then allowed for the murder of her husband Uriah, and finally claimed her as his own wife (2 Samuel 11).  Psalm 51 is David’s song of lament and repentance for these sins.

The books of 1 and 2 Kings follow the accounts of 1 and 2 Samuel and present a succession of kings who followed in later generations.  Solomon follows David after another, Adonijah, had himself wrongfully appointed as David’s successor (1 Kings 1).  As Solomon succeeds David as the true King of Israel, he asks God for a wise and discerning heart (1 Kings 3:9).  Sadly, even now, the people were forgetting God and worshiping false idols in the “high places” of Israel (3:2), and even Solomon did the same.   However, God grants him the wisdom he sought and despite his sin, he rules wisely.

Solomon arranges for the construction of a great temple to God (ch. 5), and it was eventually built, and the inner space called the “Holy of Holies” was the residing place for the “Ark of the Covenant,” which contained the stone tablets of the 10 commandments and God’s covenant with Israel on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19-20).  Despite his wisdom, and because of his sin, Solomon could not keep the nation of Israel together, and so it split in two during his reign: the northern kingdom of Israel (10 of the 12 tribes) and the southern kingdom of Judah (the tribes of Benjamin and Judah).  The kingdom of Judah is where David’s capitol city of Jerusalem, and thus the temple, was to be found.

The remaining chapters tell the account of the various kings of both Israel and Judah.  In most instances, these kings are described as one who “did evil in the eyes of the Lord...” (1 Kings 15:34 and elsewhere).    They worshiped false idols and failed to worship God.  Consequently, disaster was waiting to happen.  Israel’s kings were far worse, and the northern Kingdom of Israel was overrun and destroyed by the Assyrian empire in 721 BC.

Judah’s kings to that point had been much more obedient as a rule.  Josiah was one such king (2 Kings 22-23), who when having the temple refurbished, discovered the books of the Old Testament law, and instituted a series of sweeping reforms to try and return the kingdom to one that worshiped God alone.  His reforms were short-lived, however, as Judah returned to pagan worship and eventually it too was overthrown in 597 BC.  Its’ inhabitants were carried off into exile by the Babylonian empire, to what is present day Iraq.  The temple was looted and destroyed, and the kingdom was no more.

       Exile for both awaited, and the next installment will deal with both Exile and Restoration.