Sweet wickedness

This week is on Psalm 36:1-4:

I have a message from God in my heart
concerning the sinfulness of the wicked:
There is no fear of God
before their eyes.

In their own eyes they flatter themselves
too much to detect or hate their sin.
The words of their mouths are wicked and deceitful;
they have ceased to be wise and to do good.
Even on their beds they plot evil;
they commit themselves to a sinful course
and do not reject what is wrong.

These verses are thousands of years old, but they could apply to us today. King David, who knew all about being wicked, wrote them to share a message he felt God gave him about wickedness. What goes on in the head of an evil man or woman? How do they live like that in a world full of God's love and revelation?

The wicked start off with no fear of God. There's no acknowledgement of a higher power with a higher standard. There's no recognition that God's desires matter, or that pleasing him is of any worth. While they may believe in God, or even preach that he exists, the wicked man considers him irrelevant to his daily life. They don't ask "What does God think about this?" because they don't care what God thinks.

The wicked flatter themselves. In their own eyes, they are without flaws, or at least without the flaws that God would point out for change. Their thoughts are sycophants, toadies that constantly kiss up to them. Sometimes they surround themselves with groupies, like movie stars, so that they can maintain the illusion more easily. Oftentimes, they are all too aware of their faults, but don't want to see them, because seeing them would demand change. So they tell themselves nice things, or that their weaknesses are actually strengths.

The mouths of the wicked are deceitful. We've all heard of "spin," where public figures will not admit to faults if they can reframe them as something else. The wicked don't only lie to themselves through flattery. They lie to those around them. Why admit you have a problem and be forced to deal with it, when you can sell it as a strength ("greed is good") or just flat out bury it in half-truths?

In doing this, they've set themselves above those around them, deciding who deserves the truth, and attempting to define reality on their own terms. A wise man wants the people around him to know the truth. Truth produces growth. Truth brings humility. But the wicked man doesn't want any of those things. Truth is what stands between him and godhood. It's an obstacle to be demolished and reshaped in his quest for glory.

The wicked don't reject what is wrong. In their final, most depraved, phase, they plot evil all of the time. They don't take vacation from their self-worship and self-service. Every moment is spent thinking "How can I take what I want without being held accountable for my actions?" To admit something is wrong would be to admit that there's a higher authority with higher standards. It would be admitting to their own imperfection and mortality. "Right" is redefined to anything that produces results they like. "Wrong" is redefined to anything that produces results they don't like. To change course would be to admit that they haven't always been right, and that they can make mistakes.

The wicked are not all that different from us. We can't truly say "At least we're not like that!" when we are in many ways "like that." There are times when we commit to plans without knowing God's mind on the matter. There are times when we attempt to produce our own grace on ourselves, belittling the harmful effects of our decisions and exaggerating our strengths. Sometimes we change the subject or tell a lie when confronted on our behavior. Sometimes the truth hurts too much to want it near us. We'd rather pretend we're magnificent, holy, super spiritual beings.

The thing that keeps us from falling into full-time wickedness isn't our innate awesomeness. It's allowing God's input in our lives. It's realizing that we're not perfect. We admit when we're wrong, and try to improve our choices, even knowing that we'll still make other mistakes once we've fixed the ones we know about. There's more to life than our wants.

As Christians, we may not all be full-time wicked people, but sometimes we do wicked things. It's not the mistakes we've fixed or never made that gets us our connection with God. It's God's love for us despite our faults. Despite our wickedness, we are still sweet to him. A God like that should matter to us.

Redefining the beginning

This week is on Romans 4:7-12:

“Blessed are those
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
Blessed are those
whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”

Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! And he received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. And he is then also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also follow in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

Paul was writing to the Romans. People at that time had pretty much filtered their view of God through the idea that their connectedness with him started with circumcision. To them, a man who hadn't been circumcised could not know God. Knowing God was being Jewish, which was being descended from Abraham and being circumcised like Abraham was circumcised. (There's probably a lot more to it than that, so forgive my religious/historical butchery here.)

Paul turns their world view on its side. The world didn't begin at the point where people believed it did. God existed before circumcision, and knew people personally before circumcision. Therefore, if circumcision was some kind of magic ritual, none of that could have been possible.

People had clearly chosen to only start paying attention part way into the story. God goes back way further than that. And therefore, their envelope of experience was too small to be making sweeping statements like they had.

We do this ourselves. Maybe it's a religious background that puts God in an easily marketed box. Or maybe it's a background of heathenism or atheism that views him via pop culture stereotypes of Christianity or doctrines of other religions. None of us have the whole story, and all of us make mistakes based on what we "know" to be true. If you're pointing at "the religious people," you're pointing at yourself. Everyone has a set of beliefs they live by, and some of those beliefs will always be founded on incomplete or incorrect information.

The people Paul was writing to, the people who were further along in the faith and more influential, had lived their whole lives in the old testament, under the old covenant, which was based on the law God had given to Moses. Their view of God was filtered through that experience. They had gotten old testament tunnel vision!

Paul's message to them, and to us, is that God is bigger than that. The circumcision thing wasn't something that existed from the beginning of time. It was added. Therefore, the relationship with God is not in the context of circumcision, but circumcision was inside of a stage in mankind's relationship with God. Which is bigger? God, of course.

It seems obvious to us, because we're mostly Gentiles, who haven't practiced religious circumcision ever, especially not in the last couple thousand years. But that's not who Paul was discussing circumcision with. We have to look at this from the shocked perspective of the people steeped in it. For us, the shocking statements might be about permanent church buildings, professional clergy, rehearsed worship, enforced "tithing," or any number of things which have been sacred to us as a religious collective, but which are neither eternal nor related in any functional way to our relationship with God.

If you want to go back to the beginning, it was just Adam (containing Eve) in God's garden. There was no ritual for connecting with God, no prerequisites for faith, or special forms of address. There was God, and below him was man, and below him was the rest of creation. It doesn't get any simpler than that. And that's just the beginning of the story of "us." God goes back to the unimaginable void, full of chaos and nothing. Try making a doctrinal harness out of that!

Tradition sells itself as an unbroken chain carrying back to some ancestral time. But God exists and has always existed before that. Ever since the first man, God has been with us. The real tradition, the most natural state for us, is a perfect friendship with God. Before the first marriage, or the first church was built, or the first town was named, God was talking with mankind, living among us. Jesus died in order to cast off those chains and return us back to our original state with God. We didn't just start with Abraham or Moses. We've been doing this since Adam.

Marriage, Money, and Monogamy

This week's goodness is on Hebrews 13:4-5:

Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.

As you can tell, I've been wringing the goodness out of Hebrews this month. This week's verses are an odd marriage between matrimony and money. They do have something in common, and it does relate to our salvation.

Marriage

First a little background. I've talked with Christians, Muslims, and Atheists, and done my share of reading about marriage. Here's what I've come to believe on the subject. Marriage is:

• Optional: The old testament was a giant baby-making festival, but the new testament is all about the connection to God. Marriage can be a distraction if you're too focused on it. Therefore, if you can do without the baby-making, you can opt out and focus on God. This is ideal, but obviously not for everyone.
• Between one man and one woman: God created woman for man out of one of his ribs, not the whole set. During the population explosion of Israel in the old testament, I believe God tolerated polygamy in certain cases, but the new testament speaks against it directly. Besides, if the best number of wives/husbands is "zero", how does "many" make any sense? You need only look at the Muslim world to see the curse it brings.
• Public: If we're supposed to honor the marriage bed and keep it pure, we need to know who is married. There is no such thing as a secret marriage. That's why we have all of these complicated social customs involving giant cakes, gaudy rings, lounge singers, and limousines.
• Permanent: Marriage is a life-long pair bond. The only way it can break is when one partner dies, or breaks the contract through adultery. There are no temporary marriages, like some sects of Islam practice.
• Binary: You're either married, or you're not. Nobody's "sort of married." Engaged isn't married. Dating isn't married. "Remembering to use birth control" isn't married.

So, if we're supposed to keep the marriage bed pure, that means only letting married people into it. If you're not married, you don't belong in the married people's bed. And if you don't have a marriage bed, you shouldn't be using it for what married people do in their creaky marriage bed. Now that I've gone and told you all I know, I'll tell you why the concept of marriage is awesome...

The marriage between the Church and God

The way men and women interact is like a model of how God interacts with his Church. (When I use a capital C, I mean the worldwide Church, as in every Christian in the world, not just the group of Christians you huddle together in a room with on Sundays.) Let's see how that looks:

• Optional: Not everyone is a Christian. Only in this case, it's better to be "married" as the Church than to be without a relationship with God. We need salvation.
• Between God and the church: There aren't "many paths to God." You can't be both a Christian and a Buddhist. Or both a Christian and a Witch. The church is Christians, and Christians have a relationship with God.
• Public: In the new testament, we're urged not to hide our faith. We're not the creepy guy/gal who pries his/her wedding ring off for a night on the town. We're faithful, and faithful people admit they're in a relationship. Sometimes that means we miss out on certain choices, or that we get hassled for who we're with, but marriage is a choice.
• Permanent: We're in it for eternity. You can't just get sprinkled with holy water as a kid, and then go off and be a Muslim. Being a Christian is a relationship, and you have to stick with it. We're not just Christians on Christmas and Easter.
• Binary: Either you're a Christian or you're not. You're not sort of a Christian, and maybe sort of something else. At some point, you make a choice: This is what I am.

Money (is a dirty dirty tramp)

Money is a tricky thing. It's the life blood of our society. It's incredibly useful, but it's also a serious danger. Why on earth would Paul put it in the same verses as he puts the warnings about marriage? Because money wants to be in the marriage bed with you instead of God!

Money makes all kinds of promises about the future. If you get more money, you get more future, and you have better stuff in it. If you get enough money, the curse of toil will be broken and you can live in heaven on earth, never lifting a finger to work again. If you get sick, money will pay for you to get well. If your enemies come against you, money will make them go away. Money is power, money is hope, and despite what the Beatles told you, money will increase your prospects in love. We invest it, gamble it, hoard it, and spend it. It is everything in our modern society. People sell themselves into debt (slavery) in order to get their grubby hands on just a bit more of it.

In our relationship with God, our marriage to him as the Bride of Christ, picture what role money plays when it encourages us to seek it, to fall in love with it, and to make it the center of our life's efforts. That's right: Money is a dirty, dirty tramp! Or it can be, if you don't keep the relationship business-only...

Money inflates our hopes and increases our appetite. When money is to be had, our current lot in life seems insufficient. The thing is, God gave us our lot in life. Would you leave your earthly spouse if they couldn't afford to make the house as nice as your swinging neighbor could? When we drop God to seek a salary, that's what we're doing.

Picture waking up tomorrow with no money. No bank account balance. No wallet full of crumply bills all facing in different directions. No change between the couch cushions. No stocks and bonds. No piggy bank or change jar. Credit cards all shredded. Is that a scary picture? Do you believe that God could still take care of you if you never saw another dollar bill again? What if you never heard God's voice again, but still had all of the money?

You can only serve one God. If money becomes that god, guess whose marriage bed the Bride of Christ is defiling? Money isn't supposed to be our god. It's only supposed to be a tool. People lived for thousands of years without it. They all had enough to eat, places to sleep, and fruitful, fulfilling lives. Why run out on God for something which isn't even necessary, let alone awesome?

Keep the marriage bed pure. Don't take another god in God's place. Look at money and say "this is just a tool. it is made of paper, the same as I have in the bathroom. it is not and cannot ever be as amazing as God. it is not worthy of my worship." God will never leave us or forsake us. Can we say the same about money? Be faithful to the faithful one.

Faith

This week is on Hebrews 11:1-3:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

These verses fit together really well, despite the fact that they're only the beginning of a whole long list of examples of people who held strong to their faith. Faith, our belief in God's statements of reality, starts before we see what he describes. It's only fitting that his universe started off formless and empty.

Taking a moment to ponder the beginning of Genesis, it's hard to picture a world that can't be pictured, existing before the light to see it was spoken into being. Faith is the same way. It's there, but there is no way to access it, no way to even see it, until God has spoken it into being. If you think you're the only one to struggle with that, read about some of the stories Paul lists in Hebrews 11, about people like you and I, who are told to plan for things they can't see or even imagine.

God has spoken to us and brought us into an amazing world. When he tells us things, we have to trust him as if we saw them ourselves. In doing this, we are temporarily on the same page as God, of the same mindset, agreeing with him by sharing his perspective. It's more than just expecting things. It's putting your money where God's mouth is.

Noah is a good example of this mindset. He didn't just expect a catastrophe to destroy the earth. Any of us could have done that. Noah actively worked to do what God told him to do, even though it went against any common sense anyone could have had at the time. Nobody builds a giant boat in their yard based on a vague hunch, especially after being persecuted by their neighbors over it. He invested in God's view of reality, not in the view presented by the world around him.

Be side by side with God in your faith. Jesus said that people had no idea what they were getting themselves into by asking to stand at his right hand. I think you could say something similar about acting in faith. It's scary and unknown. All you have to go on is something which, in trying to explain it to others, is empty and formless. What are you getting yourself into? (Smart Alec answer: God's blessing.) Faith is where we're supposed to be, though.

Our salvation is based on faith. Have you ever tried explaining the gospel to an atheist? That look you get is a good indicator that what your atheist friend is hearing is formless and empty. If we're going to accept that that's true, how can we back down from accepting the other things God has told us? They can't be more preposterous than the gospel story!

So, if you're on the fence about something you believe God has said, because you can't see any evidence that it could be true, then quit being on the fence. It's supposed to be like that. Faith starts off formless and empty, gets hit with light, and then comes alive. If you're trying to come at it with science first, planning to then end up in belief, you're heading in the wrong direction.