Prayer for Syria and America

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Listening to the news this morning, I felt I had to stop and pray for the Syrians trapped in the last province held by al-Assad rebels.  The news this morning, and for the last few days, is ominous.  Government forces, with their Russian and Iranian allies, seem poised to crush the last rebel stronghold in Idlib province.

Of course only a few of the several million people in Idlib are armed rebels.  The vast majority are non-combatants.  The number of non-combatants in the province has been increased by the probably-million refugees who have fled there to escape previous war-zones.

It's not clear whether or not Turkey will accept more hundreds of thousands of fleeing Syrians when the government offensive begins.  It seems fairly clear that the world community will really do nothing to stop the offensive, although one NGO has characterized Idlib as a "death-trap" for those living there.

It's those non-combatants and refugees, families and women and children, I'm praying for.

I'm not at all praying for the politics of the situation.  Politics created the situation: why do we think politics will heal it ?  And how much is a prayer that "our side" win in accordance with God's heart: especially in a war, when we're asking Him to kill a bunch of people we don't like ?  Realizing in his Psalms David did so, his prayers were usually based on the fact those people were enemies of God, which was the reason they afflicted God's people.

We already know how God has said He will deal with His enemies (whom we should also consider our enemies): the only question is when.  I doubt we're out-of-line to ask Him to bring His righteous judgement on His enemies, crushing them so completely and quickly that His absolute sovereignty is manifest, and praised, by all who see.

That's quite a different prayer than, "God, kill those people I don't like."

Bashar al-Assad has been a worse ruler than most, for a long time.  Even at his best, he was contemptuous of God's command that a ruler be "a minister of God for good" to his subjects.  And when his hold on power was threatened, he showed himself ready to bomb and poison-gas his own people indiscriminately...children and mothers and families along with those in armed rebellion against him.

There's probably no greater measure of the man's evil than that hospitals were especially targeted by al-Assad's forces.  Even when we saw videos of horribly-wounded people and children gasping for air laying in the halls of medical facilities, doctors could do little to help as medical supplies dwindled under al-Assad's blockade of rebel areas.  His war-policy was to destroy even those facilities, to ensure there be no hope whatever for his victims.  Policy also to follow a bombing with a second bombing when medical personnel came out to treat the victims of the first.

In one sense, the current president of the United States is pursuing a similar policy.  His attacks on Truth extend to those whose work is to heal the wounds he inflicts: "the failing New York Times," and all "the fake media," that accurately report his words are lies.

After Bob Woodward's recent book detailing the danger and idiocy he's made of the presidency, he's renewed his call for libel laws that would enable him to sue anyone who publishes stories "told to make the president look bad."  And no doubt his followers, like al-Assad's, will follow his evil orders.

I doubt they will succeed: God guarantees evil will not triumph.  But sometimes He waits for evil men to fill "the cup of His wrath" to the brim before He unleashes His judgement on them.  He may do so in Syria, and He may do so in America.

But however and whenever God destroys the murderers and liars, the children of satan (John 8:44) who seek to kill men or kill truth, and seek even to kill those who would heal the wounded, God's righteous rule will be glorified, and His Name will be praised by all who see it.

May all God's people pray with David,

^"Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered,
And let those who hate Him flee before Him.
As smoke is driven away, so drive them away;
As wax melts before the fire,
So let the wicked perish before God.
But let the righteous be glad; let them exult before God;Yes, let them rejoice with gladness."

Psalms 68:1-3


                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

You Can't Cheat An Honest Man

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The old con-man's maxim is "you can't cheat an honest man."  People get sucked into a con by their own dishonesty; usually a desire for money, even if the opportunity is slightly shady.  In the BBC TV comedy Hustle, the con-artists' motto is to "find a man who wants something for nothing, and give him nothing for something."

Honest people, approached by a con-man claiming he'd found a bank-deposit someone had lost on the street, don't agree they should split it; even when the grifter points out that no one will ever know, and the person who lost it will probably be reimbursed by an insurance-company.  An honest person's first, and unshakable, response is to return the money to the person who lost it.

That's the classic con called the "pigeon drop."  There's a memorable example in the first scenes of The Sting.  James Earl Jones and Robert Redford play it to perfection on a numbers-runner from Doyle Lonnegan's gang.  (And James Earl Jones finds there are dire consequences for conning another criminal.)

You can't cheat an honest man.

The flip side of that coin is that you can't (or it's extremely difficult to) convince the dishonest of the truth.  They always suspect that everyone has a shady intent to take advantage of other people...like they themselves do.

My friend Mike Baker told me his dad always said that all politicians were out to get rich at the public's expense.  Mike said he challenged his dad once, that "You don't know that's true."  His dad replied, "Of course it's true.  I would if I could."

One of Mike's favorite phrases was "irrefutable logic."  It was usually his jocular way of throwing up his hands, when someone's self-deluded certainty made them immune to reason. That was how he characterized his dad's cynical view of politicians; and it's the "irrefutable logic" of the dishonest.

The dishonesty they share with the con-man can even produce a kind of Stockholm Syndrome: the deceived can come to identify with their deceiver.  Satan can't really make anyone follow him: and he doesn't have much to offer those who do, except the utter destruction God promises to evil-doers.  But satan doesn't have to argue us into following him.  In the absence of the Holy Spirit, he finds a room already prepared for him, and a family-welcome.

It's probably the only way satan can have children.  That may be be what had happened with those Jesus said in John 8:44 had the spirit of satan in their hearts, and called children of satan.

That seems to be what happened with supporters of the current president  Their politics already had a large component of dishonesty, and the deceiver was able to exploit what was in their hearts to his advantage.  Over the course of time, many who at first had to be deceived to follow him have come to follow him willingly, because they identify with him.

Truth is a hard sell to people with Stockholm Syndrome, who make themselves oblivious to the fact that they're being held prisoner by a criminal.

Knowing the truth, acknowledging the truth, would set the captives free.  We have Jesus' word on that (John 8:32).  But the con-man's coin has two side.  You can't cheat an honest man.  And you can't free a dishonest man from the lies he wants to believe.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Vietnam Yet Again: Thinking Honestly

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Still thinking, thinking again, about Vietnam...thinking how much it still reveals about people, in their views of the war.

I'd asked a brother at church, who'd been in Vietnam, if he'd seen Ken Burns' documentary on the war.  He had, and said it focused too much on the Vietnamese, and on the Americans who protested the war, creating too much sympathy for them.

When people tell me things I find it hard to believe they believe, I usually listen quietly...because I'm too stunned to respond.  So I listened to him, as he continued with the claim I've heard many times: the protestors and the media made America lose the war.

I still find it incomprehensible that people believe that, or ever believed it.  That idea was put about by Richard Nixon, as his excuse to take any blame off himself for losing the war, simply because our part in the war (which he rightly saw as not a "victory") ended during his administration.  The historical record shows that Nixon had an abiding fear that he would be seen as "the first American President to lose a war:" he talked about that fear often, in public and (we know from the Watergate taps) in the privacy of the Oval Office.

Nixon shouldn't have worried.  There were many reasons the United States did not "win" the war in Vietnam: if by "win" we mean the United State stopping North Vietnam from reuniting the country under Communist rule.  None of those reasons originated with Nixon.

There were Vietnamese reasons America "lost" the war: the corruption of every South Vietnamese government the U.S. supported, for example, and Vietnamese nationalism.  There were American reasons: Robert McNamara later especially singled out the false "domino theory" thinking by which Presidents Kennedy and Johnson entered and conducted the war.

Nixon shouldn't have worried.  President Johnson and Robert McNamara, who'd had charge of conducting the war before him, had both privately come to the conclusion that the war couldn't be "won."  They were both aware that America was already "losing" the war when they turned it over to Nixon, so they could hardly have blamed him for the inevitable "defeat."

There's no honest reason to judge Richard Nixon "the first American President to lose a war," as he feared.  But the historical record shows that Nixon too, very early after he took charge of the war's conduct--if he didn't know it before--realized the war would not be "won," and could not be "won."  

So what should be our judgement, historical and moral, of a man willing that thousands of people die for no purpose but to protect his self-image ?

The claim that "the media and war-protesters caused America to lose the war" was likewise Nixon's hypocritical defense of his image.  Nixon knew, as did most of America, that the war would not and could not be "won:" but he needed a scapegoat to blame for the inevitable "defeat," lest he be seen as "the first American President who lost a war."

Nixon's reason for telling the lie is clear, and the historical evidence is clear that he knew it was a lie, when he told it.  What baffles me is why so many members of the "American public," the target of his deception, believed it.

What baffles me even more is why so many continue, long after Nixon's beyond telling them the lie, to deceive themselves to believe it ?  How do they do it ?  To believe that lie, people must convince themselves that except for "the media and anti-war protestors," the United States would have "won" the war in Vietnam: a premise that was in Nixon's time, and is even more clearly now, nothing short of delusion.

It all comes down to the same question I've wrestled with all my life: why do people believe a lie ?

The only answer I've ever been able to arrive at is "because they want to."

What seems to me the wisdom of that answer is that what a person most deeply wants shows who he most deeply is.  On Vietnam...or anything else...there are people who want to believe the truth, and people who want to believe a lie.

For anyone who takes seriously Jesus' identifying Himself as "The Truth" (John 14:6; and His identifying satan as "the father of lies" in John 8:44), what we want, truth or lie, is ultimately a spiritual question.  And it is the ultimate spiritual question.  Amen.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

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).

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Calvin on Evil Rulers

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I very definitely have no dog in doctrinal disputes about Calvin's teachings.  I'm not even sure what anti-Calvinists are called, beyond "anti-Calvinists."  It's never really seemed a necessary part of my life in Christ to research and decide and declare if I'm a Calvinist or an anti-.

The formal theology associated with Calvin's name is doubtless flawed: that's only what we should expect of anyone's theology, including our own.  Believing any human mind can substantially encompass the reality of God is a first step toward idolatry...taken in pride.  None of us can, and none of us do.  So I'm also pretty sure the theology of Calvinism's opponents is just as flawed.

It seems a mistake to follow either to the extent we identify by one "side's" name, or by the other's.  Taking "sides" in theology is the same as taking "sides" in politics, football, nationalism, or any of the other human constructs to which men give their allegiance: that is to say, idols.

"Taking sides," or "factions," is not a fruit of Christ's Spirit any more than idolatry is.  Galatians 5:20 says "dividings" or "factions" grow from our flesh.  The Greek word there for "dividings" is haireseis, from which we get our English word "heresy."

The rhetorical question in I Corinthians 1:13 affirms that Christ is not divided.  Since Jesus identified Himself as "the Truth" (John 14:6), Christians, above all other people, must believe that "the Truth" is not divided.  There are no "sides" in Truth, no "your Truth" and "my Truth:" and the only "anti-" connected with it is denial of Truth.  The latter is what Jesus said is the distinguishing character of "the father of lies" (john 8:44).

Quoting Calvin here has nothing to do with identifying as a Calvinist or an anti-Calvinist.  I cite Calvin because I consider he speaks scriptural truth.

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"We are not only subject to the authority of princes who perform their office toward us uprightly and faithfully as they ought, but also to the authority of all who, by whatever means, have got control of affairs...that whoever they may be, they have their authority solely from him....they who rule unjustly and incompetently have been raised up by him to punish the wickedness of the people; that all equally have been endowed with that holy majesty with which he has invested lawful power....a wicked king is the Lord’s wrath upon the earth...thus nothing more would be said of a [wicked] king than of a robber who seizes your possessions, of an adulterer who pollutes your marriage bed, or of a murderer who seeks to kill you. For Scripture reckons all such calamities among God’s curses. But...In a very wicked man utterly unworthy of all honor, provided he has the public power in his hands, that noble and divine power resides which the Lord has by his Word given to the ministers of his justice and judgment. Accordingly, he should be held in the same reverence and esteem by his subjects, in so far as public obedience is concerned, in which they would hold the best of kings if he were given to them.”

                                   --  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 20, Section 25

 
"He now commends to us obedience to princes...that the Lord has designed in this way to provide for the tranquillity of the good, and to restrain the waywardness of the wicked...for except the fury of the wicked be resisted, and the innocent be protected from their violence, all things would come to an entire confusion...

For since a wicked prince is the Lord’s scourge to punish the sins of the people, let us remember, that it happens through our fault that this excellent blessing of God is turned into a curse.”
 

                                  --  John Calvin, Commentary on Romans  (Chapter 13, vv. 3-4)

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The Purpose of Clarification

I wrote a few weeks ago that I strongly sense this is a time when God is clarifying all things.  Clarifying our minds, too, about all things.

"All things" kinda resonates for me with "Alpha and Omega," Who Jesus IS.  And it makes theological sense to me that Jesus is God's clarity to us, in all things.

Jesus said "I AM...The Truth."  That's been the most clarifying realization of my life.  So I'm always super-aware of anything about Truth...and anything against Truth   How could I not be, when Jesus said that IS His very IDENTITY ?

Jesus' statement is not abstruse "head-polish" theology.   Truth exists.  Truth exists as part of the ordinary reality of our world.  (Which is, of course, what today's holiday supposedly celebrates about Jesus.)

We think and act, every day, in ordinary dependence on the existence and operation of truth in our world.  Juries are charged to sort out the facts of a case they hear, and witnesses to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."  We expect journalists (real journalists, at least) to report what really happens: even the weatherman.  The professions of scientists and historians is to look for truth, and report it truthfully.

So it's particularly significant that "post-truth" is the Word of the Year, describing people who ignore "objective facts" in making their decisions.  It's particularly significant that this year we needed that new word, for the new idea that Truth doesn't really matter.  Significant, too, that that new word and new idea came out of politics.

In that political attitude toward Truth, I think God's spoken some simple clarity: especially to Christians.

If your politics makes you unable to distinguish between righteousness and unrighteousness, your politics are not of God.

If your politics tells you Truth doesn't matter, your politics are not of God.

If your politics leads you to believe lies and follow deceivers, your politics are of "the father of lies" (john 8:44).

Christians who've let politics confuse them about Truth need to repent their politics.

Repent immediately and deeply.  This is a time God is clarifying all things, including who is really His.  He knows His own by their love of Truth: because that's who actually loves Jesus.

The Spirit of Reality

The blog-post by our Australian brother Tim about "post-truth" Christianity, which I re-posted a couple weeks ago, included a particularly striking insight

"It’s sad fact that many (even professing Christians) really have no love of the truth, preferring to mould a more appealing (to them) version of 'reality' to live by."

His linkage of "truth" and "reality" is spot-on.

We know there's a profound sense in which "truth" and "reality" are somehow the same kind of thing: though we can't easily say how that's so.  "Reality is the manifestation of truth" is the working definition I've come to: though I'm certain there's a lot more to that equation than my formulation takes into account (or that limited human understanding can take into account).

Another way of putting it might be that "reality" and "truth" are both what really and truly IS.  And that makes both, to my understanding, theological quantities, since God IS "I AM THAT I AM."  Theologians who have opined that God is "Ultimate Reality" are probably close to the mark.

Jesus' Own Person seems to bear out that equation.  He used God's Own Name when He revealed His Being is exactly Truth: "I AM...The Truth" (John 14:6).  Jesus is the Word (Logos) of God through Whom "...all things were made," and without Whom "...nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:3).  "Truth" and "reality," including the physical reality of creation, are joined in Who Jesus IS.

The confirmatory "flip-side" is that the enemy, rebel against All that God IS and does, is, in Jesus' words, "the father of lies" (John 8:44).  From the first time we meet him in scripture, he is working to deceive human beings by questioning God's Truth ("Has God really said . . .?", my emphasis) and denying the reality God made ("You surely will not die . . .", my emphasis).

The enemy has not changed his tactics.  They still work.  Even though, as Tim notes, refusal to love truth necessarily means relinquishing reality as well...and forces people to invent their own.

I find it interesting that the political faction Christians have followed for 40 years is the premier anti-Truth and anti-reality voice in America.

Like all political factions, it's always "spun" truth to achieve electoral success (the only "good" political factions serve): though rather more outrageously than other factions.  But the surprising election of its "post-truth" candidate this year has hugely confirmed that faction in the "wisdom" of post-truth politics: that truth doesn't really matter for electoral success.

It's no accident that the same faction also champions various kinds of reality-denial.  One major example is that "climate-change denial" is a virtual litmus-test for members of that faction, a legacy of their demi-god founder, Ronald Reagan.  Other varieties of reality-denial, including some very "fringe" ones (white-supremacy, for example), also make that faction their ideological home.

Tim's observation that "truth" and "reality" are linked seems sound theological insight: both are established by God, in His Own Being.

It should tell us something that American Christians have followed factionalists whose spirit is contempt for truth, and denial of reality: the same sins Adam and Eve fell for.  To those with spiritual eyes to see, that faction...and the Christians who do its will...abundantly show their spiritual patrimony.

May deceived Christians repent !  May God destroy those who deceive His people !!

Amen.