Love, Power, and Evil: Playing It Out

Love...'does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;' (1 Corinthians 13:6 NASB)

Love is what makes anything, including myself, worth something; in a sense, it's what my Master values.  Not that I'm not valuable to Him enough to warrant the sacrifice of Jesus, we all are.  But what makes my Master take notice is not the use of 'gifts' but the attitude and lifestyle of His kind of love.

Love is one of those things so misunderstood by our culture that we can scarcely use the same word within groups of followers of Jesus.  What our culture means by love and what we mean by love have almost no points of connection.  I think that's partly because our culture can't even settle on some sort of definition.

When the logical problem of evil and suffering is addressed by atheists, they typically use the construction: God is Loving + God is Powerful yet Evil.  They claim that for evil to exist there would need to be either a weak God incapable of stopping evil, or an unloving God disinterested in stopping it.  The problem with both options comes down to the definition of love and power, and often evil.

Love stands defined better than I can in this venue.  A brief summary of power is perhaps best explained in terms of 'parenting'.  Just because a parent can kill their kid when they're bad, obviously showing bad/evil tendencies, and so on, they normally won't.  When that does happen, we call it 'evil'.  Most of the time, they have the power to do something but they restrain the exercising of that power because they choose to.  It's power to control power, which is much greater than simply having power in the first place.  And, ironically, it's what we expect of parents.

Evil on the other hand, at least in the Hebrew Scriptures, is subjective.  What's evil for one isn't necessarily evil for others.  It better correlates to the English word, bad.  When in war, a city is attacked and destroyed, it's evil for those in the city, but good for those attacking.  Of course, sometimes things can be seen as universally bad, where everyone agrees, that's bad.   Still though, that only means from our subjective view point, without knowledge of specifics, like how it got that way, what it would take to change it to good, and so on.  And then there is the bad mixed with good.  For instance some good things have bad consequences, and some bad things have good consequences. 

With these definitions, I believe just because evil exists it isn't necessarily tied to some defect in God.  He can easily fit the definition He provides of love, exercise power over power, and there be stuff I don't like in this world.  And, beyond that, there can be stuff He doesn't like in this world.  Being loving means that His aim isn't our 'happiness' but our absolute best.  If that absolute best is eternity in heaven, then His choices in restraining his power might not look loving to us.

I believe that the path of love described in this chapter heads directly to the throne of God.  I also believe that it is a path which returns back into the world.  The path to His throne also transmits love back into the world.  But the ultimate destination is heaven, not earth.  The ultimate good which triumphs over evil in this place is heaven.  Heaven overwhelmingly tips the balances into our favor.  And this is true regardless of the evil suffered in this world; and there is unimaginable evil suffered in this world. 

Without listing the vast examples of evil in this world, suffice it to say that love in the midst of them overcomes their consequences.  One of my favorite sayings is, 'Darkness isn't anything in and of itself, it's only the absence of light.'  The take away from that should be a fearless shining of the light of God in our lives.  The darkness in our world is only the absence of the light of God in it.  So shine. 

Now, people don't like bright lights when they've been in darkness, so it seems bad.  But the consequence is their ability to see all the stuff they've been missing because we can't see without light; and that's good.  So the patience of love and kindness of love overlook the comfort of people adapted to the dark, and shine light anyway.  It seems bad at first, but the eventual consequences are far greater than the dark-adapted good.

I have neighbors, and I'm supposed to 'shine' into their lives, even though, at first, they won't really like it.  I'm supposed to do it anyway, because if I don't they will be left in their darkness, comfortable as it may seem.  Without light, they won't know God, know His love for them, and will not have a relationship with Him.  And that's bad.  Ultimately, that's the greatest evil possible.

The Character of My Disturbing Master

I can’t remember if I’ve said it before, but God, my Master is really weird.  I mean that in the strangest sense of the word.  People have used weird to refer to ugly and disgusting things, but they are not unimaginable, not really weird.  But my Master does not just twist the obtainable things into new stuff, but actually takes stuff unimagined and makes stuff unimaginable beyond the initial unimaginable stuff with which He started.  He is really weird.

I stress this because I worked very hard against a trend of my upbringing.  It is one that I saw everywhere, I caught it rather than was directly taught it.  If you ask most believers if they have this trend I suspect they would deny it in words, but evidence might show in their actions.  For a very long time I interpreted Scripture from the perspective of already knowing my Master.  The alternative is to interpret Scripture in order to know my Master, and is preferable in the extreme.

What I mean by interpreting Scripture from the perspective of already knowing my Master is that I assumed God was such-and-such a way and had such-and-such a character or character qualities.  And I am not referring to the “Omni’s” of His character, but personality.  And this character was not only derived from my early understanding of authority, but was influenced by that.  My perspective or understanding of the character of my Master was more influenced by the stories I was told and read as a child.  God is good, God is great, God is powerful, and loving.  But none of the stories I read really defined what “good”, “great”, “powerful”, and “loving” really meant.  I had to look at society and culture to find those definitions.  And, just so you know, society and culture have the wrong definitions for those terms, regardless of the culture and society.  Some may get closer than others, but none get it completely right.

So I had “built” God, my Master, in an image I received from my culture and family.  Then, while in the US Army, I began to actually read the Bible.  The stories were no longer from children’s books and Bible story books.  They were from the Scriptures.  There were stories which never made it into those books, stories which were vastly different from those books, and there was this Character in all of them Who was very different from the character in those books.  I assure you that my Master is really weird.  If you want a case in point, take the passage from today’s entry in MUFHH, Genesis 22:2.  The promised son for whom Abraham had waited literally over a decade was to be the demanded sacrifice, whole burnt offering demanded by Abraham’s Master.  That is a weird Master.  Think of just the “mixed message” in all of this.  “I love you and will provide you a son in your old age from you and the wife you love.  But then kill him once you have had a chance to bond with him.”  This is one of those things which those who do not know my Master make them not want to get know my Master.  What cruelty!  For another instance, why put two trees in a garden, and then punish all of humanity when they eat from the wrong one?  That is so cruel!  What did God expect to happen?  Of course they would eat from the wrong one eventually!

So, this has a tremendous effect on my understanding of holiness.  Being odd for God as He is odd means being weird in scary ways.  Jesus says He came to save the whole world, yet the Father commands the Hebrews entering the promised land to completely destroy the first city devoting everyone and everything in it to Him.  How exactly is that “loving the whole world?”  Things like this are what give people the impression that the “God of the Old Testament” is different from the “God of the New Testament.”  People accuse my Master of having a dual personality or being bi-polar, or a variety of other mental disorders.  And they have a case, or would, if my Master were human, and not the One capable of creating this universe.  But He is the One capable of creating this universe.  He claims to be loving, even in the Hebrew Scriptures.  So it must be that I am the one not really understanding love.  He claims to be powerful, so it must be me who does not understand power.  He claims to be good, so it might just be me who does not really understand “good”.  He claims to be great, so perhaps I don’t have a “great” understanding of that word.

Part of my submission to my Master is accepting His definition for things.  And that is scary because His definitions run contrary to the society and culture in which I live.  I will be looked at like a freak, like I’m weird, like I’m odd.  So, holiness is not as easy as it might first seem.  It is not the exalted position servants of my Master might assume at first.  And part of the problem is not having some slick unassailable argument for the definitions which run so contrary to our society and culture.  My only fall back for a definition is what I read and how I understand the character of my Master from the Scriptures.  I can point to those examples, but they are not easy to understand (see the reasons in the previous paragraphs). 

The truth I have had to receive in exchange for my early assumptions is that my Master is weird in scary ways, does scary seemingly mean things, and is not safe in the way a kitten is safe, but actually dangerous in the way an enormous tiger is dangerous (lions are always used, but tigers are even more frightening, and larger than lions).  So, I wait, worship, and walk before One scary weird Master.  This Master loves me, which I don’t understand and can’t really explain only show.  This Master has my back, which is even more meaningful when the One protecting me is so frighteningly powerful.  And this Master is the One I serve, which brings me into very close contact with Him.  How can I not tremble at that?  Even the protectors of His throne are shockingly frightening.  He is truly terrible, and I enter into another day of service to Him.

Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost For His Highest": April 26th.

Be Good for "Goodness" Sake?

Today's devotional from My Utmost For His Highest is really an extension of yesterdays.  But it is a good extension.  It reminded me of something I used to say in my younger, perhaps more holy, days.  I used to tell the youth I worked with after I was in the Army that, "whatever you see in me that you don't like or is bad is the real me. Whatever you see that is good, right, and admirable is God in me, and not really me."  I said this because at that point of my life, I knew that I had this sin in my life, and that I did not let anyone into its existence.  But I also said that because I was very aware that my Master was at work in me, and was doing some pretty amazing things in and through me.  Those things helped me maintain this sense that I may not be perfect, but I was usable to my Master.  That was sometimes a sense of pride, sometimes a point of encouragement.

But somewhere along the way, I either heard or read that we should be proud of the good within, that the work of Jesus and His Spirit are the real us, and that we should take credit for those things, own them and respond with gratitude when others point them out.  Now I admit that I probably missed a very important point of whoever wrote/said that.  It is very possible that the person meant that we should be aware and proud of what God has done, not proud of ourselves.  But what I heard was somewhat askew from that.  Well, I bought into that perception way too deeply, and was brought into stark realization that I could not maintain any sense of being good enough or acceptable enough to my Master.  But I also took on the expectation I assumed others had of me that I be that good or acceptable to my Master.  I doubt they had that much expectation of me and were probably more aware of my foibles and weaknesses than I thought they were. 

In John 3:29, John the Baptist says that the one having the bride is the bridegroom (duh), and that the friend of the bridegroom, rather than jealous or competitive for the bride, rejoices at the joy of hearing the bridegroom while waiting for him.  This is how John saw himself in relation to Jesus.  He saw that his mission and work, and even popularity, was that of the friend of the bridegroom, rather than the bridegroom.  So, his joy was filled to overflowing that Jesus was getting more attention than him.  This must be my attitude as well.

When I was in ministry, one thing that seemed to work well for me was working with fringe members or people in the community or church life.  They were the people new to church, or new Christians, or for whom all the stuff of church had not sunk in or clouded their minds and hearts.  With these, I seemed able to work and make headway.  Church-people really didn't like me much, I seemed to make them uncomfortable.  I did that on purpose, but it also alienated me from them.  If you have read previous entries you might pick up on statements where I said I was afraid of them.  I was.  I was afraid that church people would see through me easier, and somehow find out I was not as "sinless" as I expected that they expected me to be.  I inferred from their implication that I was supposed to be perfect.  The problem is that I doubt they ever really implied that, I just inferred it.  Sure they wanted me to be without slavery to some secret sin, and would not have been overjoyed to know that I was, but they were astute enough to know that everyone sins.

Back to the success with fringe people, though.  There was something fresh about working with them that I was drawn to, and successful with.  They allowed me to be who I was without expecting me to be in the mold of "preachers".  They didn't know what that would be like.  I think they found me refreshing because I was not what they imagined preachers to be like.  And I had this identity with their distrust of the hypocrisy in church that they liked as well.  In some ways I was enabling of wrong perceptions, but in others ways I helped bridge the gap between lone devotion and corporate worship.  In either case, I still used that phrase claiming all my good was Jesus, all my bad was really me.  It was somewhere in the space after that ministry, in the midst of the clouds of depression, in the haze of self pity that I heard (or thought I heard) that I was good.

Honestly, anyone who has wrestled with Calvinism and TULIP theology has wrestled with this issue.  And Calvinism is not ambiguous in its view that humans are totally depraved.  So this was something I had traveled out of and back into several times, even during my ministry.  How depraved is total?  Is "depraved" even the right word here?  Total is total, and yes, it is the right word.  I am the friend of the bridegroom who is in the background of the pictures when I appear at all.  The good in me is truly Jesus and what His Spirit has done in my life.  The bad stuff is made up of remnants of my rebellion against Him.  My joy is found and experienced when who I am and what I do point people to my Master.  He is the One who makes anything good in me evident.  He does that because He wants to my weaknesses and frailties to point to His amazing power and grace.  He wants to display His power to use and do wonderful things with such fractured people.  He wants to encourage the world with the evidence of His grace which calls anyone in any circumstances to come to Him.  I am proof He chooses to use anyone.

So, I hope you read and are encouraged.  I hope you consider these things, and think of my Master's desire for you.  But I did not write this for you to gain this insight, but rather to confess that I am gaining it; that I don't already posses it, but I am gaining it.  It is the evidence of the grace and power of my Master which pulls me up from the ground toward the light of His Son.  He is the Master Farmer, I am the stalk of...whatever He planted.