Stephen
Terry, Director
Singing
the Lord's Song in a Strange Land
Commentary
for the February 3, 2024, Sabbath School Lesson
"This is what the wicked are like-always
free of care, they go on amassing wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart
pure and have washed my hands in innocence...When I tried to understand all this,
it troubled me deeply." Psalm 73, 12-13, 17, NIV
Humanity has struggled over
theodicy since the very beginning. We are born and raised to the idea of justice
that demands an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Therefore, when we see it
playing out disproportionately, we do not see that as justice. To our way of
thinking, God let Cain off the hook when he did not slay him for killing his
brother Abel. We wonder if God's compassion toward Cain was not largely responsible for the proliferation of evil in the world
that brought about the eventual deluge and a reboot of humanity. But this challenges
the idea that God's compassion, inaction, or indifference toward evil is at
fault for its proliferation today. On the one hand, God shows compassion in
judgment and evil continues to thrive, so we blame him for not dealing with
evil. But on the other hand, God finally deals with evil, shutting up the only
righteous family in an ark bouncing on a turbulent sea, and we decry it as
genocide. Those who wanted God to finally do something about all the evil in
the world may have been pleased, but did that put a stop to the evil, the
injustice in the world? No, it is still with us today.
God is not the problem. We are. We
seem incapable of living at peace with one another without trying to gain the
ability to manipulate others, bending them to our will. But why? It is because if
we do not do it to others first, we fear they will do it to us. It is painful
to be manipulated, coerced into being someone we are not. There is the mental
anguish of abandoning our image of ourselves as good people. And if we resist,
there is the terrifying threat of physical pain or even death to force our
submission. The fear of that happening can turn even the kindest of people from
spiritual descendants of Abel to offspring of Cain. We can be tempted to become
monsters to save ourselves if we begin to believe that God will not or cannot
save us from the pervasive evil in our world.
Sadly, that does not work
either. When a stronger person commits an injustice toward someone weaker, the weaker
person seeks out something to equal the disparity in power, a rock, a knife, or
a club. Then the stronger begins to do the same thing, driven by their fear of
loss of control. Then people form alliances, tribes, gangs, and militias until principalities,
states, and eventually countries are facing off in dangerously shaky balances
of power that serve as mutual deterrents until someone manages to seize control
who cares little about the relative peace that exists because of the forces
offsetting one another. Insulated by their army so that they will never have to
die at the hands of the enemy, they perpetrate an offense, shocking in its
degree of evil, to demonstrate the fragility of the peace that previously
existed. Thereby, they encourage all to return to a state of fear, fear of
domination and even fear of death at the hands of a vengeful enemy. Hundreds of
thousands, even millions die, and people who feel powerless under the onslaught
of war ask, "Where is God?" They forget that when he tried to intervene,
humanity used what power they had to murder him as well.
We want to be in control. We do
not want others to tell us how to behave. When we want something or someone, we
want to be unchallenged in our desire to have it our way. The power and strength
of Barrabas is more attractive to us than the gentle demeanor of Jesus. Maybe
we believe that if we choose rightly, the power of the person we follow will
protect us from those who would try to control us. But that is vanity. They can
easily use that same power to control us. Why wouldn't they if that is how they
live life? Lasting relationships grow out of mutual love and respect, not out
of allowing our will and our personhood to be swallowed up into someone else's.
When someone tries to stoke our fears, it should be a warning. We should ask
ourselves what are they trying to accomplish by doing that? Love and fear
cannot coexist.[i] If we are afraid, we can be
sure the relationship is not based on love, and if we are loved then we know we
have nothing to fear from the relationship. Two hearts, in love, without fear
of one another is a blessing from God and rare if we do not make the sustained
effort to overcome the fear in our lives with love.
When we understand our worth, a
worth that was so precious, God sent Jesus to express his love for us, then we
will be less inclined to define our worth according to another's opinion of us.
We will be able to slough off the derogatory, just as Jesus did. He was called
a glutton, a drunkard, and someone who hung out with the wrong crowd.[ii]
Because he understood who he was and his purpose, the efforts of his enemies to
define him were unable to stick. Others will seek to define us according to the
size and style of the box they wish to place us in, but when we understand who
we are and our purpose, we can claim the power over our own lives that others
would take from us. When someone tells us to hurt another person before they
hurt us, we can have the power in ourselves to say no. When someone wants to
march us off in armies to wreak havoc on others, we can refuse, even if it
means we will face the ultimate fear an enemy can offer up, the fear of death.
If that happens, we face no more than Jesus and his disciples faced. Besides,
as much as we may wish to avoid the issue, death comes to us all anyway. We may
wish to somehow get around it, wishing that cup to pass us by, somehow cheating
death by living until Jesus returns. But millions who may have thought the same
had to deal with death anyway.
Too many of us live our lives in
fear of death. As we age, we lament that all that medical science has to offer
may provide us extra months or years but continues to remain powerless against
the death which pursues us. We fear others bringing death to our door and arm
ourselves with guns and security systems to keep him away, but when he knocks,
none of that will prevent him. We go as we are called, never to see or use the
things of this life again.[iii] It
is not my intent to make light of death. It is a serious matter. Even Jesus
sweat blood when he was facing death on the cross.[iv]
When I was a child, we had mandatory vaccinations that we lined up for in
public school. Many of the children were terrified of the needle that would
poke them in the arm, but back then it was unavoidable. Terrified or not, the
shot would happen. Was the shot unpleasant? Of course. But fear only magnified
that unpleasantness. It is the same with death. We may do all we can to forestall
it. We may rage against the coming darkness, but in the end, terrified or not,
death will come.
We have distanced ourselves
further from that reality than the early Christians did. Was it because of
their new faith, or was it because death was so much a part of life then? Many
children did not make it out of childhood. Even for those who did, periodic
plagues, cholera, typhus, simple wounds that became septic, tuberculosis, and
other challenges made for shorter lives and a more matter-of-fact relationship
with death. Modern medical science has prolonged life to the extent that now we
feel entitled to live exceedingly long lives, even if those golden years turn
out to be more rust than gold.
Death can stare us in the face
on any given day, we should not allow it to cause us to be afraid. Others can
use that fear to manipulate us. Instead, like Jesus, we can cling to the
promise that death will not be the end. He has promised to return and raise us
from our graves on that day at the sound of the last trumpet.[v]
While the world rages and everyone seeks to dominate everyone else through fear,
we do not need to play by the rules of that game. We can lay aside our fear and
cling to the promise of Jesus, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. You
believe in God; believe also in me. My Father's house has many rooms; if that
were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for
you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to
be with me that you also may be where I am." (John 14:1-3) This makes us more
than conquerors.[vi]