Living Parables

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I've been thinking again about Hosea's prophecy:  How God gave His word to the people in a parable that Hosea lived before them.

It gives me new light on something I've long noticed, listening to the daily news.

It has often happened (just to cite the most notable instance) that some person in a news-story is grief-stricken.  In our society, it's often the parent of a murder-victim.  It has amazed me how often, even weeping, a grieving parent will say, "I have to forgive him," or "I am going to forgive him," about the murderer.

I've even heard stories where a parent has befriended the murderer, visiting him in prison, advocating for him at parole-hearings, "adopting" him on his release from prison: loving the murderer of their child.

We all know how powerful was the Christian witness of the Amish community, after their daughters were slaughtered in their school-house.  Because it was a high-profile mass-murder, the news went around the world.how they grieved for, and supported, and comforted the family of the man who murdered their children.

But even in "secular" mass shootings, we hear the grief-stricken speak forgiveness.  Even in the many less news-worthy individual shootings, or other devastating crimes against people, it's amazing how many of the deeply-grieved say they forgive.

Forgiveness is not always as definitive a "Christian witness" as it was by the Amish.  Some forgivers reference their Christian faith; some don't.  There's not always a reason given.  No doubt some forgive for other reasons than Jesus' teaching and Example.  I've heard Moslem victims of car-bombings say they forgive the bomber.

It's always seemed to me that doesn't matter.  The spirit of forgiveness is "out there," operating in people's hearts.  The spirit of forgiveness is Jesus' spirit.  More than whether people acknowledge Him, the point is that He is "at work" among us, as He said He'd be, whether or not we acknowledge Him.

It is, for us individually, the choice between life and death that we acknowledge Him...fully, continually, devotedly.  But He is present and manifest and ruling among men, whether or not we choose to see Him.  Being able to see Him present and working is one joy of acknowledging Him.

When we do, we see Him enacting living parables around us, among us, of His Word to us.  His salvation, in Hosea.  His forgiveness, in grieving parents.

Praise You, Father !!  Thank you, our beloved King.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

"Not That Kind of Christian"

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

My daughter sometimes re-posts on facebook things she's seen on a website called "I'm Not That Kind of Christian."

Usually those posts spotlight a telling contrast between what Jesus taught, and the teachings of today's Christian "leaders" who toady to "conservative" politicians.  One I especially remember paired Jesus' words on how we should treat "enemies" with a quote of Franklin Graham's obsequious praise for the current president's threatening to "incinerate" every North Korean.

That group's name reminded me of the discomfort many of us felt some years ago, when Fred Phelps' followers' were continually keeping themselves in the news, with their "God Hates Fags" signs, and demonstrating at the funerals of soldiers who died (they claimed) because God was punishing America for allowing same-sex marriage.

If a passage came up in Bible study calling homosexuality sin, my friends would agree it's so, but usually feel they needed to reference Phelps group, and quickly add, "But I'm not that kind of Christian."  If we're honestly trying to follow scripture's teachings, we're put in the position of having to differentiate ourselves from the "Christians" who use God's words to justify their anger, hatred, and violence.

When people doing the works of satan perversely call themselves "Christian," we're right to separate ourselves from them.  Our identity as Christians is Christ's Identity.  He only gives it to those who do His works.

I've been wholeheartedly "pro-life" for 50 years now.  Ronald Reagan converted me.  I was a convinced Goldwater conservative after reading "The Conscience of a Conservative" in the early '60s: so when Goldwater's greatest spokesman became Governor of California, I was eager to see how a real conservative would change government.

One of the first changes Reagan made was to California's anti-abortion law.  With his encouragement, Republican legislators enacted America's most "permissive" abortion statute, and Reagan signed it into law.  The number of legal abortions in California skyrocketed.

It was quintessential conservative doctrine, that government's interference in citizens lives should be severely limited.  And what greater individual "right" could there be, where government's "intrusion" was more illegitimate, than in the individual's decision to have, or not have, a child ?  (The later Roe v. Wade decision for a "right" to abort was also based on that conservative principle.)

At the time (1967), I really didn't know what abortion was.  I had to look it up.  When I found out what it meant, my reaction was (the same as John Brown's the first time he saw a slave) "That's wrong."  I haven't changed that view.  And my contempt for conservatism probably dates to that time as well.  Contempt is the only right reaction to any doctrine that justifies evil.

When Reagan ran for President a decade later, I thought maybe he'd had a change of heart.  He said he was "pro-life" then.  But in his 8 years of popularity and power, he did nothing to actually change abortion law.  It seemed clear he talked "pro-life," as his faction of "conservatives" have talked it ever since, primarily as a vote-getting tactic with the "Christian conservative" movement that was created to elect him (over that arch-nonChristian, Jimmy Carter).

My hatred of the politicians' hypocrisy, and that of "Christian leaders," has grown in the 40 years since Reagan.  So it's become increasingly necessary...and I'm increasingly glad...to distinguish between following Jesus, and following "Christian conservative" politicians and preachers.  Anyone whose intent is to follow Jesus is forced to distinguish himself from those whose "Christianity" amounts to supporting liars (like the current president) and murderers (like the N.R.A.).

I'm not that kind of Christian.  Nobody who is a Christian is.

In our time, it's become necessary to distinguish ourselves from those who claim Christ's Identity, while doing the works of satan.  We can best draw that distinction by doing the works of Jesus.  One of His works was calling out the hypocrisy of "religious leaders" who were leading His sheep to destruction. Let us all do the works of Jesus.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Mass Murder Again

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

With every mass-murder, it seems increasingly clear there is no hope of this country changing its course.

Every murder is followed by the same debate, between the same irreconcilable "pro-gun" and "anti-gun" factions.  Whatever other issues come into the debate, its spirit is political.

The deepest kind of political, because any American debate about "rights" is political, and the N.R.A. has framed the debate as being about "rights."  The uselessness of the debate is that the N.R.A. has defined "rights" as having guns.

Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God.  He didn't say much about politics, the human construct by which mankind tries to assert its rule.  Nowhere is the spirit of "politics" more blatant than in societies like America's, whose faith is that "the people rule," Greek demos kratia. Jesus's contrary message is that God rules.

Jesus also didn't say much about "rights."  Unless giving up everything to which He was "entitled," even His human life, said everything about "rights."

Jesus does talk about murder.  He says that everyone angry with his brother (such as most people engaging in America's gun-debate) is guilty of murder (Matthew 5:21-2).  I John 3:15 makes Jesus' teaching even more explicit: "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer."

Jesus also says murderers act in the character of their father, satan (John 8:44).

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The Turn-About of Disobedience

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

As my long-time teacher Derek Prince pointed out, the word "authority" comes from the word "author," which means "the person by whom a thing is created."  Even leaving aside His complete wisdom, His infinite love, and all else He IS that makes Him the Only One Who should ever rule, God's absolute authority in all things is His as absolute Author or all things.

So His decision that men should have kings to rule among them is unquestionable, as is His choice of the men who will rule.  His command is that we respect and obey those He puts in authority, in respect and obedience to His Sole authority to make those choices.

An interesting thing has happened among us in recent years.  When God placed Barack Obama in authority in America, there were very many people (including very many Christians) who treated him with complete contempt.  In our recent history, no American president has been more violently hated, or had more lies told about him.

Of course God's choice of the "kings" He gives us owes nothing to the personalities of the men.  But it's interesting that those who most reviled and hated Obama were those most instrumental in "choosing" (as they thought) the current president, who was one of their kind.

The current president has certainly made that faction's characteristic spirit a large part of how he rules.  America has never had a president who ruled with more contempt, hatred, and lies than this one "chosen" by those Americans most given to lies and hatred.

I don't entirely subscribe to the saying that "people get the kind of leaders they deserve."  It doesn't seem completely accurate, or fair, to blame the ruled for rulers like Hitler, Nero, Stalin, and others.  But in the reality that God authored, there will certainly always be a moral equity between what people do, and the consequences of their actions.

It all comes down, ultimately and completely, to God's authority.  And the most important point is that He commands those He sets in authority, His authority, to rule in His Character, as "ministers [servants] of God" (Romans 13:4, 5).  He commands that they rule in His moral Character, for good to those who do good, and "bring[ing] wrath" on evil-doers.

The kind of rule God commands of those to whom He gives His authority could not be farther from that of America's current ruler.  I will not say that the lovers of lies and hatred who (believe they) "chose" him "got the kind of leader they deserve:" but there's a God-ordained moral equity in their being ruled in the spirit they love.