Zach’s Theological Musings

  Ephesians 6:2:

“Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”

  Deuteronomy 5:16:

Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

  Deuteronomy 27:16:

‘Cursed be anyone who dishonors his father or his mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

  Note, in particular, that these promises and threats are issued within the context of the covenant community of God’s people. I find strikingly recurrent “quality of life” patterns in two distinct classes of Christians whom I know well enough to discern such things in.

  Camp A are those who speak with a certain bitterness, resentment, and/or ingratitude towards their parents—that is, if they speak of them at all; you can be friends with someone in this camp for several years and never hear them mention their parents because they prefer not to talk (or think) about them. People I know in “Camp A” generally have most or all of the following traits in their life:

1. Recurring attempts or thoughts of suicide, or at least a general “wish I was dead” mental/emotional state. Ongoing (not just temporary) depression.
2. Often there are “replacement parental figures” who take the place in the person’s affections that rightfully belongs to the parents who bore and raised them. (Yes, issues of adoption and such may complicate things here. But probably the best response, in the spirit of God’s command, is simply that a special, irreplaceable place of honor should be given in your heart to EACH of the people who played a parental role in your life: biological parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, AND spiritual parents, not just one or the other.)
3. Continual, seemingly unresolvable conflict and strife in certain (generally family) relationships. This is significantly more intense than the occasional, resolvable conflicts that those in “Camp B” face.
4. Continual, seemingly unconquerable sin, temptation, and suffering issues. Again, while those in “Camp B” obviously also face sin, temptation, and suffering, there is a marked distinction in the way that these issues seem to dominate the lives of people in “Camp A”.

  Camp B are those from whom you hear a generous, honoring attitude towards parents. Their parents certainly weren’t perfect; people I know in this camp include children from divorced and unbelieving households. Nevertheless, those in “Camp B” long for any faults and sins their parents might have to be made whole in Christ more than they long for “justice” to be served. They don’t make much of any wrongs they may have suffered from their parents, but rather embrace their parents with the unrelenting love and forgiveness that they themselves have received in Christ. As mentioned above, while those in “Camp B” certainly have bouts of depression, conflict and strife, and while they certainly face even prolonged temptation and suffering issues, these things do not dominate their spiritual joy and quality of life in Christ in the way that those in “Camp A” are dominated.

  In summary, the clearest distinction I can make is that the lives of those in “Camp B” exude a certain powerful shalom (peace) that is absent from “Camp A”.

  These distinctions can also be made within different periods of the life of a single individual. I can personally testify to periods of parental-dishonor in my heart during which I suffered the devoid-of-peace curses described above even when times were “good”, and periods of parental-honor in my heart during which I experienced persevering shalom even when times were “bad”.

  Yes, of course I know what pagan pop-psychology would say: “These `Camp A’ people were abused and neglected by their parents, so it is no wonder if they are screwed up and bitter about it.” But far more than even any experiential evidence I could offer, I would remind brothers and sisters in Christ to accept the diagnosis direct from God’s word: You may have suffered the most horrifically unspeakable things at the hands of, or under the closed eyes of, your parents, but the spiritual havoc you wreak in your own life, closing doors to blessing and opening doors to cursedness, by failing to honor your parents from the heart as God wants you to, is worse that what anyone else did do, or could do, to you!

  Thus this post is not merely meant as a descriptive analysis, but rather a plea: Receive the blessing that God has promised! There is a level of peace and joy in life available far beyond what you have experienced even as a professing Christian. I am not saying that there is a state of having something “more than Christ” in the Christian life. Rather, I am saying that “Camp B” is part and parcel of the normal Christian life, but that by choosing to live in violation of God’s command (Camp A) you have blocked yourself from fully experiencing the true blessed life in Christ. Repent! And receive the blessing! From someone who has spent time in both camps, I say PLEASE put away ALL bitterness and seek a heart of genuine honor toward your parents, and see if God isn’t faithful to His promise!!!!

  For more on this, see the very first entry posted to this blog: Honor Your Parents.

  Excerpt from Jonathan Edwards, “God Glorified in the Work of Redemption”:

“The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God himself is the great good which they are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ has purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their life, their dwelling place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honor and glory. They have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world.

The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; and is the ‘the river of the water of life’ that runs, and the tree of life that grows, ‘in the midst of the paradise of God.’ The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another: but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them.”

HT: Nick R.

“God Loves You and Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life”?

* A Christian missionary to North Africa is on furlough visiting his home in America. While backing his car out of the driveway he accidentally runs over his own son and kills him.

* A famous Christian singer adopts three children from China and starts a charity organization to help others adopt both domestically and from abroad. His eldest son accidentally hits the youngest adopted daughter in the driveway and she dies.

* A Christian woman leaves America to bring a message of God’s love to the Middle East. One morning as she opens the very clinic where she has given herself to serve those in need, she is fatally shot at close range in the head.

* A man leaves Islam to follow Christ, is ostracized by his family and community, and flees to a another country where he continues spreading the gospel. While in “exile” in this second country, a bomb set outside his house explodes just as he is running past it and his body is blasted to pieces.

* Countless professing Christians in the “free world” have (just like the rest of society) their houses foreclosed, earthly investments plummet in value, loved ones die of cancer, paralyzing car accidents, unrelenting emotional/relational/spiritual struggles, prolonged unemployment, spouses leave them, etc., etc.

* Countless Christians around the world are thrown in jail, betrayed, tortured, killed, have their churches burnt down, their houses searched, and their reputations slandered.

  Does reconciliation with God through the blood of Christ open the doors to experiencing God’s wonderfully comfortable plan for your earthly life? NO! NO, NO, NO, NO! Reconciliation with God through the blood of Christ *IS* God’s wonderful plan for your life!!!! Jesus is not only the golden key that opens the hidden treasure chest, He is Himself the full content of what is inside!!!!!!! Not promises of good grades or good jobs or good health or good relationships, but JESUS, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief whose triumphal kingdom is in some sense “already” but also “not yet”! That is what (actually whom) you get in the gospel!

  By way of contrast, a statement from a book on (supposedly) evangelizing Muslims in which the author gets the gospel dreadfully WRONG:

  “[F]ollowing Christ should not–—and need not–—bring on persecution and blame from other Muslims. … It is incredibly good news [i.e. the gospel?] to a conscientious Muslim who has put his trust in Christ as Redeemer that he can know that his sins are forgiven, that he will assuredly go to heaven, and that he can have nothing to fear on Judgment Day–—AND STILL be a part of his community [emphasis added]!”

  To which I respond: DOG CRAP! Scholars say the Greek “skubalon”, which appears only in Phil 3:8, derives from the word “dog” together with the word “cast out”, “that which is cast out from a dog”, i.e. feces. (Alternately, some think the etymological meaning is “that which is cast out TO the dogs”, i.e. scraps of rubbish; but in any case I would contend that the two ultimately turn out to be the same thing!) The incredibly good news is that everything you used to think was incredibly good news apart from Christ is in fact dog excrement compared to knowing Him. Your greatest earthly desires—remaining part of your kinship community for a Muslim or living the free and prosperous American Dream for a Westerner—smell like feces to those who have experienced the aroma of life in Jesus Christ. To wedge an imaginary promise of abiding earthly community with non-believers into the gospel as if that were on par with “forgiveness of sins” is nothing short of heresy!

  Does God have a wonderful plan for your life? Yes! Not to spare you from tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword, but even better to reveal the all-surpassingly satisfying greatness of His love which is able to sustain you WHILE YOU ARE BEING SLAUGHTERED as sheep all day long (Romans 8:35-36). The abundant life in Christ (John 10:10) is the life of abundant joy amidst abundant trials and abundant earthly sacrifice that JESUS HIMSELF experienced; the abundant life is:

That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead (Phil 3:10).

  How can Proverbs 12:21 (NASB) say:

No harm befalls the righteous,
         But the wicked are filled with trouble.

Perhaps it is not so hard to accept that the wicked are filled with trouble (though there is some tension to be resolved even there, such as that faced by Asaph in Psalm 73). But doesn’t experience and Scripture itself show that the righteous are too? What about Job? What about Jesus — a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief!?!

  Well, a few things can be said. One is the nature of proverbs and wisdom literature. Proverbs generally don’t give “hard and fast rules or laws” that are never broken without exception. Rigid, logic, math-oriented people like me have to be careful no to let the phraseology fool us. Throughout the Bible, just because qualifiers are not stated within a sentence or paragraph doesn’t mean that there aren’t any intended. This is especially true of Proverbs. Indeed, with proverbs the “qualifiers” often come in the form of other proverbs! The classic example is Proverbs 26 verse 4 and then 5:

4 Answer not a fool according to his folly,
   lest you be like him yourself.
5 Answer a fool according to his folly,
   lest he be wise in his own eyes.

(Although don’t expect the qualifying proverb to always be so close by!)

  Often the role of wisdom sayings is to create and sustain “categories of thought” in our mind. They “pave useful neural pathways” in our brain, if you will. That doesn’t mean that such a pathway paved is always the best one to go down, but it is important to have it there available and be aware of it. Yet another analogy would be that of tools. A proverb gives you a hammer and teaches you how to use it, but it is not always the right tool for the job. Indeed, part of wisdom itself is knowing how to use, or not use, a saying appropriately:

Like a lame man’s legs, which hang useless,
   is a proverb in the mouth of fools. - Prov 26:7

  So as to our original proverb, there is truth and wisdom in observing that as a general trend, because of God’s design of this world, a righteous way of living in line with His character does result in favorable consequences and a wicked way of living does result in harmful consequences. Engage in sexual immorality, for example, and you open yourself up to contract diseases which you wouldn’t have if you had abstained. Be a person of generosity rather than selfish stinginess, and when you yourself have needs it is more likely that others will be eager to help you.

  Second, there is also something to be said for these things being ultimately true. As the Psalmist discovered, the wicked may prosper greatly for a time (e.g. greedy, selfish, cutthroat businessmen) but the moment when their foot slips and they lose everything is awaiting, it’s just a matter of time. Likewise the righteous may suffer, but all their sorrows will most certainly turn to joy.

  But there is one more way that I think this saying can be understood which just occurred to me in my latest reading of it. That is, there is a huge difference between the righteous and the wicked on the matter of perspective, not just eternal perspective but even their perspective on the here and now (though the eternal perspective is certainly a key ingredient to fueling a godly perspective on the here and now). What one interprets as vexing, irritating, unbearable trouble and harm, the other can view as an opportunity for sanctification/refinement, as nothing worse than what he is in fact due, indeed as a form of blessing. The righteous “know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, emphasis added).

  Take Job for example, Job in his better days that is, especially before his discouraging “friends” got to him. When he lost his beloved children and all his possessions in this world he said:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” - Job 1:21

He had lost nothing that was really “his” to begin with. He was born naked and crying into this world. He had to right no claim anything whatsoever as his own, including “his own” body! Anything he had was truly God’s possession, temporarily entrusted to Job’s stewardship. If the Lord would choose to take it back He had every right to do so.

  Paul pleaded with the Lord to remove the thorn in his flesh. But when the Lord replied, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weaknesses,” Paul submitted to seeing Christ honored in whatever ills might befall him as a greater worth and a more satisfying treasure than his own temporary earthly comfort:

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. - 2 Cor 12:9b-10

  And oh the testimonies of those who have been tortured, imprisoned, and beaten for Christ and found joy in that very thing (not merely despite it!)! See, for example Josef Tson’s testimony of joy through harsh interogation, “Thank you for the beating” (freely available from the Romanian Missionary Society). In doing so they simply fulfill the words of the Master:

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. - Matthew 5:11-12

  If we are to rejoice at persecution from the hands of our “enemies” (the command, “love your enemies,” shows that Christians do have enemies but with a very different perspective from how the world views enemies), how then can the righteous grumble and complain over the trials, no matter how grievious, that even the pagans share with us, much less the common minor inconveniences of life? I dare say they can’t; at least, they can’t continue in such a path without facing stern warning and discipline from the Lord:

Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall. - 1 Cor 10:10-12

  Do I mean that Christians can never sorrow? That they are always literally bouncing with happiness and gushing over how much “joy in the Lord” they have? No. Jesus wept. But harm and troubles are never the controlling or dominate theme. There is no evil that comes upon us to which we cannot say, “God is working this very thing for my good.” It is not that the good gifts from God outweigh the bad, it is that there is good for us even in the very things that appear bad to the flesh. If we go and learn what this means,

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.” (2 Cor 4:7-12),

then we can truly say in all circumstances, “No harm has befallen me.”

  I thought this was interesting in light of Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46):

He who oppresses the poor taunts his Maker,
         But he who is gracious to the needy honors Him. - Proverbs 14:31 (NASB)

  On a related note, when reading the Old Testament, I so often hear echoes of things Jesus said, even in bits and pieces of “obscure” (i.e. not well known or recognized today) phrases from the Prophets, the Writings, or sections of the Law. Specifically, much of the wisdom in the Sermon on the Mount can be found in Proverbs. I realize more and more how His speech is saturated with the Jewish Scriptures, whether in the form of direct quotes, paraphrases, or simply continuity with its imagery and ideas. Indeed, I have a suspicion that a person could do a careful study and find Old Testament roots for every word recorded from our Savior in the gospels. Perhaps someone has. (Tell me if you know of such a work!) I’m not saying that Jesus incarnate didn’t say or add anything new (though perhaps in some limited sense you could say that). He definely is the fullness and completion of God’s revelation. But I am saying that you could find at least clear seeds for everything that came from His mouth.