Posted on by Abe Austin

The Threat of Good People- Patterns Big and Small

Pattern of Hate)

I’ve spent the past two days discussing the tendency of those that feel wrong to try and tear down those that seem right. The reason for this is that the very existence of the holy is a testament against the impure. The holy prove that moral living is possible, and that it is better, which means that the immoral are worse and deserving of blame.

This pattern is nothing new. To his friends Jesus foretold, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you,” (John 15:18-19).

To his enemies Jesus said, “Ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning,” (John 8:37, 44).

The children of the devil seek to destroy Jesus and also hate those he has chosen. Thus, the impulse of the wicked to destroy the righteous is nothing more than an extension of the devil’s desire to destroy God.

Woven Through All)

This animosity isn’t just political, and it isn’t isolated to one instance. What we see in our private lives is but a fractal strand of a war that is cosmic and universal. There are branches of this struggle that are relatively low stakes, such as when the awkward child tries to tear down his more successful peer, but it is the same spirit behind it that would murder a God.

The immoral want to destroy the moral because evil wants to destroy good. Meanwhile the good, if they are truly good, emulate the God at their root and seek to redeem the wicked.

Just as these cosmic, eternal forces have fractal strands woven into our society, so too, there are strands woven into our own selves as well. There is an agent of evil within us that seeks to tear down our good parts, because those good parts remind us that there is a better version of us inside, and that we are not meeting our full potential. And there is that agent of good in us that seeks to redeem the evil part and raise it to its holy potential. As we learn to find the right solution within ourselves, we will learn how to find it in our society, and our society will join God in His solution for the entire universe.

We are all part of one cosmic ritual or another, and the outcome that we support in the eternities is echoed in the outcome we seek in ourselves.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 23:24

24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.

Yet again the Israelites are commanded not to worship false gods in place of the Lord. Today’s verse takes it further, though, commanding Israel to actively overthrow and break those idols. The Israelites are to be the anti-idolatry. A faithful Israelite and an unbroken pagan god cannot remain in the same place, for either the god will be broken or the Israelite will become unfaithful for not doing so.

I confess, I am not sure that I can fully identify this same attitude in my own life. Certainly there are all manner of sinful behaviors that are totally incompatible with my faith, but if I find those practices occurring around me my reaction will depend on my location. If I am out in public, or in someone else’s domain, my natural behavior would be to remove myself from that place, not to destroy the problematic elements. On the other hand, I would not tolerate anything that I perceived as an idol or a vessel of sin to stay within my house. Should I find drug paraphernalia in a drawer or pornography on a hard drive within my own home I would destroy those things.

Perhaps this difference in attitude is cultural. We do not have the legal right in our Western civilizations to destroy the things of others just because they are an affront to God, and I don’t see many Christians looking to die on that hill. Of course, it does not seem that the Israelites toppled every pagan edifice when they were a captive people in strange lands either. Perhaps such absolute refutation and destruction of false gods is dependent upon living in a free theocracy.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 9:13-16

13 And the Lord said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.

14 For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth.

15 For now I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the earth.

16 And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.

Pharaoh had held out for two plagues in a row, so now came the third. The Lord sent Moses yet again, and Moses was to deliver a most weighty speech to Pharaoh. Through Moses, God used language like “I will…send all my plagues upon thine heart…and upon thy people,” as well as “I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee,” and also “thou shalt be cut off from the earth!”

And all this was only the preamble! In verse 16 God made a most dramatic assertion. He told Pharaoh that the only reason why the Egyptians had enjoyed their place as a great world power was so that God could make an example out of them! God had made Pharaoh powerful so that He could break him, and show the world that the God of the Hebrews was master over all! God had propped Pharaoh up simply so that he could take a terrible blow!

We often remind ourselves that God is a God of love, and truly He is. But He is not one-dimensional. He is also a God of justice, a God of judgment, and a God of retribution. He redeems the innocent, but He also condemns the wicked. God tells us that He “shall wipe away all tears” from the faithful, but also He asserts that “vengeance is mine” against the wicked. Thus, in addition to His lovingkindness, God is capable of anger, of going to war, and of utterly destroying His enemies like no one else can. And, I would argue, nowhere is this side of God made more clear than in His dealings with the Egyptians.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Optimism in a Falling World- Luke 9:52-56

And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him.
And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.
And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?
But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.
For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.

COMMENTARY

And they did not receive him, and when James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?
Yesterday I considered Jonah’s desire to destroy the wicked. Today we see an example from Jesus’s own disciples to do the same. Because Jesus and his followers were denied access to a city, James and John sought to kill all the inhabitants with fire.

But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.
The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.
James and John might have believed they were serving the spirit of justice, yet Jesus avowed that they were serving another. What they sought was simply vengeance, and Jesus’s purpose was not to bring vengeance, but salvation.
I believe that many of those who hope for the destruction of the wicked take their cues from the stories of the Old Testament. It is in those early books that we read accounts of the earth being flooded, of fire and brimstone consuming cities, of the armies of the Lord stamping out other nations. In these stories there is a definite immediacy between evil actions and divine retribution. One could not go to war against God without quickly enduring the consequences of that action. But what is forgotten is that this was the Old Testament and the earth was in a fundamentally different situation than it is now. Mankind had been expelled from the Garden of Eden and the atonement had not yet been made. Things were far stricter, and there was little to buffer between sinful acts and the holy justice administered in return.
But Jesus Christ had come to be that buffer. Jesus Christ had come so that the immediate justice for evil works could be born out in his own body instead. Divine justice still applies, even to this day, but now it is executed in him, while mankind is given a second chance.
Thus today we now live under the New Testament. And that means that if we look at the evil in the world today and crave punishment for the guilty, we are denying the fact that that punishment was already endured by our Savior. We are therefore looking for a double punishment, one carried out upon Christ and one carried out upon those he died to save. That isn’t justice at all. Like James and John, we are not comprehending what manner of spirit we are of. It is a cold, cruel, and evil spirit, one that has nothing to do with Christ.