Author: Craig

The Grace in Nevertheless

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Your response to the coming of God in your life depends in large part on your attitude toward God.   Is the arrival of Immanuel good news or bad news?  Isaiah sees the darkness, gloom, and despair that overwhelms a nation that persistently refuses to trust God.  If Ahaz (Isaiah 7 and 2 Kings 16) and others will not trust God then they will lead the nation into a deep descent in which paranoia (Isaiah 8:12) and fear  rule their hearts.  Because they refuse the knowledge and the word of God, superstition and the occult (Isaiah 8:19-22) rule their hearts creating a dissatisfied and angry generation.  These people have no peace in their hearts nor in their nation as it will be ravaged by the Assyrians.  Without the perspective provided by trust in the sovereign God they will drift in darkness.

And then Isaiah sees the grace of God break into the darkness like a mighty spreading light.  The NIV introduces Isaiah 9:1 with “Nevertheless.”  This “inspite of” moment is a glorious interruption that comes not because of the righteousness of the people, but because of the character of God.  “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.  And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

Christmas is a celebration of God’s zealous intervention in our darkness.  The Messiah comes as a child, initiating a new kingdom, not by means of earthly rule or military might (John 18:36-37).  He is not more warlike than Israel or the Assyrians.  Rather the Messiah comes and by his character and very presence among us–the literal fulfillment of Immanuel, God with us–As a child, He begins his peaceable, expanding, and eternal Kingdom.  Now we may know Jesus as our Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:7)

Like Ahaz, we may have lived in our own darkness, independent of God, ignoring His call for faith in Jesus, but “nevertheless” the grace of  God breaks into our world, “For unto us a child is born.”  If God truly loves us, that changes everything.  (See Ephesians 2:1-10)

its a matter of scale

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“I am not all that important.”  I agree, humility is a virtue to be nurtured and appreciated.  However, I have been surprised to hear now from several sources, “humility” as a reason not to pursue God.  In contrast to my friend who believes to accept the reality of God would diminish himself, this “atheist” upheld his position of non-engagement in the question of God as one that emerged from humility.  “I am not all that important, and humans are not all that important.  Why would I need a god to tell me I’m significant?  We don’t really matter.”

Indeed even a cursory look at the stars puts us in humbling position in regard to the universe and time.  The Psalmist declared, “When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers–the moon and the stars you set in place–what are people that you should think about them, mere mortals that you should care for them?”  Psalm 8:3-4

The extension of this humble view of insignificance seems to me to have a troubling consequence.  If I extend the view that I don’t matter to others, then they don’t matter as well.  I am not sure I would want to live in a society in which other’s don’t matter and the choices I make in respect to them don’t matter either.  Such a society would eventually suffer from its corporate amnesia and enter into the chaos of distrust and the persistent pursuit of self-interest.  That’s the way human hearts seem to work.  We abandon the forward motion of love for tolerance; we abandon tolerance for apathy.

So it is a matter of scale.  When looking at the stars, earth and its inhabitants seem relatively insignificant.  However, when I look across the room or across the table, I am glad there is someone who cares or takes an interest in me.  If I am really so insignificant, why do I care to be loved?  And it is at this point that the Christian message becomes very particular and quite scaled down.  God, who in three persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, engaged in the Creation of all we see, got very personal with us.  The incarnation of Jesus Christ is described in the most physical and close terms:  “So the Word became human and made his home among us.  He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness.  And we have seen his glory the glory of the Father’s one and only Son….God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God.  But the one and only Son is himself God and is near to the Father’s heart.  He has revealed God to us.”  John 1:14, 17-18 (NLT)

The Gospel is announced in Jesus’ incarnation;  God is getting up close and personal.  He crossed the universe to announce and complete His love for us…for me…for you.

liberty, human rights, & the Gospel

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“This understanding of the equal and inalienable value of people has steadily made its way into people’s thinking wherever Christianity has spread, so much so that every ethical theory by Western philosophers, however much they differ from each other, assumes and is based upon the absolute value of every human being.  Since this teaching of Jesus took hold in Western civilization, our legal systems, our understanding of human rights, the slow and gradual rise of democracy, and the emancipation of women and slaves–all rest on and are inspired by such simple parables as that of a Lost Sheep, a Lost Coin, a Lost Son, because they teach us that every person must be taken with ultimate seriousness.  These stories encapsulate the core of the gospel:  each and every person so matters to God that God the Son became a human being to seek us.  Nothing can give us the value and worth that underlies our civilization’s conviction concerning human rights, which is spreading to the rest of the world today–nothing except the love of God.  To reject God, to ignore God, or to neglect God is at the same time to reject, to ignore, or to neglect our irreplaceable value.”  Diogenes Allen, Theology for a Troubled Believer, xxii

The critic vs. the skeptic

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“A critical person is not a skeptical person, who raises or looks for difficulties in order to undermine Christianity and to avoid personal commitment.  Critical persons have faith and are seeking better to understand what they believe.  To one who lives only in a pious mode, a person who at times is in a critical mode of speaking may appear threatening and even a skeptic.  Some skeptics, on the other hand, take all believers to be merely pious people, without critical faculties, and they mistakenly identify faith with irrationality.”  Diogenes Allen, Theology for a Troubled Believer, xvi.

Who is crying now?

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Can you imagine what it would be like to grow up without having ever watched the evening news on TV or ever played a video game full of death?  The first time would be shocking.  The absolute abandonment of respect for others would be shocking; Unless of course that is your life and is the reality of the house you live in.  Without calluses toward the shock of violence, rape, murder, anger, theft, lying, we would daily be utterly crushed by the evening news.  Or having viewed it with no tears, we walk away with our self-righteousness intact, glad we are not like those people.

I’m reading Ezekiel with one of my Life Transformation Groups and I have been challenged with the question “Who’s crying now?”  God gave Ezekiel a scroll to eat and on both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.  And God said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.”

So I’m wondering whose lament, whose mourning, and whose woe filled those pages?  God’s?  Was it God’s lament for a nation that was incapable of knowing, and loving Him.  Or was it the mourning of victims; Were those pages filled with the cries of those who had received no justice; who had only suffered at the hands people or a system out to steal even their hope?  Or did that scroll give voice to the regret of those who realized the folly of their ways?  Those who wish they could go back and do life over because of the pain their callousness had inflicted upon others?

The scroll was sweet to eat.  However, Ezekiel is totally overwhelmed by his encounter with the glory of God and the assignment from God to go to a people who would not listen.  He writes, “The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in anger in my spirit, with the strong hand of the LORD upon me.  I came to the exiles who lived at Tel Abib near the Kebar River.  And there, where they were living, I sat among them for seven days–overwhelmed.”  Ezekiel 3:14-15

The Gospel has a sweet taste but also creates a disturbance.  To respond to the reality of a world that is not as it should be and to our own complicity with rebellion against God is disturbing.  But I do believe the Holy Spirit fortifies us for honesty and promises, “joy in the morning.”  And Jesus promises, “The Truth will set you free.”

James encourages the followers of Jesus to humble themselves before God.  “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Come near to God and he will come near to you.  Wash your hands, you sinners, purify your hearts, you double-minded.  Grieve, mourn, and wail.  Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.  Humble yourselves before the LORD, and he will life you up.”  James 4:7-10

What does such humility look like?  Perhaps it looks like Ezekiel utterly overwhelmed sitting quietly by the river Kebar for seven days among the very people he was called to serve.