A Ramble About Dead Men Walking

I recently saw and re-posted a cartoon on Facebook. It was supposed to be funny, but it carried a profound truth. It was of a guy getting his future read by a psychic. The psychic exclaims “You're going to die.” To which, the guy responds in horror, “Oh no! When!?” The psychic calmly responds, “Eventually.”

I love this cartoon.

This cartoon illustrates perfectly the simple truth of being human. My life is going to end. I am going to die. Do I know for certain when? No. But I do know for certain that I will either five minutes from now, five days, five years, or five decades. It is more certain than the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. No matter how many people attempt to subvert this, ignore it, run from it, prolong their lives as long as possible they can it is fundamentally inescapable. There is no living, physical creature that will not eventually cease and dissolve back into its individual elements and constituents and there is no way for that creature to know for certain when it will happen. I, like every other human being on Earth, am a “dead man walking.”

What is more, this dead man walking will face judgment for all that he has done. There is no getting around this either. This is true regardless of what religion or lack thereof you profess. Either you await judgment in the afterlife, or you await the judgment of history, and by those who remember you and everything you have done. I believe that I await judgment for all that I have done and said by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. While there are some who may believe this will be a fun and pleasant experience, I am under no such delusions about what I will hear repeated back to me. I believe that He is able and willing to deliver even me from judgment, but I know what I deserve.

So how does a dead man walking live? Does he celebrate the moment, knowing that each could be his last? Maybe, except we do not cease to exist. Physical death does not mean we can just party and then go into oblivion. After death comes the judgment. No, the wise dead man walking must live every moment with this death and his own impending judgment fully in view. He knows that everything he does will be reflected back to him at this judgment. There is going to be nothing more important to him than this single fact. Everything else around him will become dead to him for the sake of this one event that he cannot afford under any circumstances to botch.

Will it matter to a dead man walking how much money he makes? Not in the slightest, because the amount of money, possessions, or social status will have absolutely no positive bearing on his judgment and depending on what he did with it could have a very negative bearing on his case. In fact, the less responsibility he has in this area, the fewer possessions he has to be responsible for, the better off he'll be.

Will it matter to a dead man walking how comfortable he is? Whether or not he has all the food he wants and likes, the sexual companionship, and/or all the comforts this life has to offer? Nope. Because he knows that it will end, and again have no positive bearing on his case. Will he care about how he looks or his physical appearance? No, because he knows every time he looks into a mirror he is looking at a corpse that just happens to be breathing for the moment.

Will a dead man walking care about what others think about him, or what he thinks of himself? Uh... No. The truth is that the only person whose opinion matters to him is going to be his Judge.

For those of us who follow Jesus Christ, He and His Apostles repeatedly informed us that we are dead men walking in no uncertain terms. They say it so often that I really shouldn't have to repeat it here. If we believe in Jesus Christ then we will believe what He said about this and act accordingly.

So, are you a dead man walking, or not?

A Ramble About Robin Williams

As probably the whole world knows now and mourns, Robin Williams, the extraordinary comedian and actor passed away not that long ago, and, while I've been actively commenting about it on Facebook, out of respect I've been putting off writing anything about it on my blog which has a potentially wider readership outside of my own family and friends until now. As I've debated on what to write here, I realized that I've already written it in bits and pieces, all that remained was for me to assemble them.

Losing Robin Williams is like finding out the crazy uncle you loved as a child who lived in your attic and always made you laugh killed himself. My heart goes out to Zelda Williams and their family. In a way, it was like losing an extended member of our family. I grew up on Mork and Mindy. My first PG movie was Popeye. We even shared an affinity for the Legend of Zelda series (for which his daughter was named). Robin Williams wove his way in and out of my life as far back as I can remember with his comedic and dramatic roles. In many ways he could be a comforting figure always there to make you laugh. It may be out of place to mourn like this for a man I've never met, but I feel a loss nevertheless. He will be missed.

Robin Williams, according to his wife, was an Episcopalian. This means that, whatever else he may have been, he was a baptized professing Christian. There is no shortage of stories about his generosity and charity towards others, so let's count this as the actions of faith to back up this assertion (we won't go into his more bawdy standup routines).

Being influenced by clinical depression he committed suicide. Everyone and his brother knows how the Church has called suicides historically. The reasoning behind the Church's stance has been that, unlike with any other sinful act, a suicide has no earthly chance of confession and repentance. So then the question becomes does the person have the chance to confess and repent after death... and then it becomes really complicated. The ante-Nicene Fathers don't actually comment on it except that you didn't find Christians committing suicide. Suicide, in their minds, was the ultimate demonstration of disbelief. If one could commit suicide, then one simply did not believe in Jesus Christ regardless of any previous profession. One's actions betray one's genuine beliefs. If the sin of disbelief is the only unforgivable sin, then suicide is the ultimate expression of it.

I think the biggest mistake Christians have been making for centuries is making judgments on who is saved and who is not. I think it is equally damaging to make a judgment on someone's eternal outcome to say either they are definitely "saved" or they are definitely "damned." This is not for us to call in either event, either for people currently living or deceased. We simply don't know for certain, and until the living become the deceased that outcome is still up for grabs. It is the mercy and uncreated energies of God through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ which makes the difference and ultimately, in that final moment, this is known only between God and that person. In the final consideration, maybe this question, like most theological questions, is best left to remain mystery and for us to be concerned, not with who else is cooperating with His Grace, but whether or not we are.

I have been argued with by good fellow Christians who insist that all professed Christians, suicides or no, will be saved. They come to this conclusion based on the belief of “once-saved-always-saved”. These are points upon which we disagree. I do not believe these disagreements are enough to prevent us from being family in Christ. We both have the same hope in the mercy of God through faith in Jesus Christ. We do have a different understanding of Grace and personal responsibility where that Grace is concerned. Theirs is born of the Reformation. Mine is born of the Church Fathers. Both took their understanding from the Holy Scriptures, interpreting those Scriptures in different ways. One thing the Scriptures do not say about judgment is that we will be given a theological quiz at the judgment seat. Therefore, I'm pretty sure neither theological position will impress Him. I believe that we will both hear exactly what we've done, said, and thought in this life recounted to us. I don't know about them, but it will not be a pleasant experience for me. The only way I will come out of it is because of His mercy, and not anything I've done to deserve it; and to be sure, I will be begging for it by the time He's done to add to the mercy I have begged from Him while I am still breathing in this life. I have faith that He is able and willing to deliver even me, but I am under no illusions about what my judgment will be like or what I deserve. They are right, no one may earn Grace, but it must be cooperated with even just in the act of acceptance. One cannot make use of a gift until he accepts it, therefore he must cooperate at least that much with the giver. It is a misunderstanding of the ancient teaching of the Church to assume that one must "earn" their salvation. This is simply not true, and a good reading of the Church Fathers as well as Holy Scripture will reveal this. But that ancient teaching does place a personal responsibility on the Christian to remain in Christ, just as He did, and the larger portion of their writings were devoted to the "how" this was accomplished because it was the practical "how" which was the most important subject to them. The how involves obedience to what He taught as a primary component and the natural outcome of genuine faith, and not just a verbal confession. I will not say that I am "saved." I will say that I am in the process of being saved, and that by His Grace and mercy I will be saved through faith in Jesus Christ. This I believe is true to the Faith which He and His Apostles preached, and is true to the Faith which the Church Fathers practiced, wrote about, and many died for.

So how do we, as Christians, call it on Robin Williams? Do we as his assumed brothers and sisters take his clinical depression into account and say it doesn't count as a suicide because he wasn't in his right mind when it happened? I honestly don't know how to call this one. But in all honesty, that's the point. It's not my call on whether he receives a pass on it, it's the Lord's. Personally I hope he does, but I can't say for certain what's going to happen once he stands before the throne. I only know, at this moment, what my own response will be when I get there. I do know this, that God is merciful and Robin Williams seemed a humble man. Humility goes a long ways with God. So let's leave it in God's hands where it belongs and remember the man for the good legacy he left behind.

A Ramble About California

I grew up here, yet after five years it all feels very strange. Since we don't have a car right now, my wife and I have done a lot of walking around. They're the same streets we used to walk on, the same paths we used to take, the same landmarks, and instead of feeling like we've come home, it feels like we've landed in a foreign country. It's not because of all the signs in Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish, and half a dozen other languages besides English, though to be sure it's something I haven't seen in years. You don't quite get this kind of a linguistic salad in rural Tennessee, Idaho or Arkansas. No, I'm not sure what it is to be honest, and to be honest, for a while there I didn't think we would ever come back here.

If you're not from Southern California, it's kind of hard to explain what it's like here. I remember one time the director of a camp I was a counselor at encouraging us to go back and be a transforming witness in our own hometowns. The way he spoke, he assumed that we all came from small towns where everyone knew everyone else. I don't think he could have imagined the three million plus people all crammed together and on top of each other. Here, it's entirely possible to only encounter people you know at work, school, and home and to not run into anyone you know just walking around town or going to the grocery store or theater. Every time I would open up the Rand McNally road map and show friends from out of state what Southern California looked like, they would usually comment with something akin to “Oh wow...”

Southern California culture tends to be all about “me”. What can “I” get out of it? How can “I” be successful, happy, and get more out of life? How can “I” be a better person? This kind of thinking is pervasive everywhere you look, from the way people drive to the way they interact with each other face to face. And many of the churches don't appear to be any different.

The type of Christian faith and practice around SoCal tends to be focused on “me” as well, and many pastors tend to cater towards a self-improvement mentality. One's Christian faith is all about making them a better person, overcoming addictions, overcoming abusive pasts, and sometimes evangelization campaigns here begin to sound very similar to pitches for a weight loss commercial, “Come to Jesus and be a better 'you'!”

The problem with this statement is the assumption which it makes on the outset, which is that life is all about “me”. That the goal of the Christian life is self-improvement. “What is the point of doing something if it doesn't make me a better person?” This sounds like a perfectly good question and a moral basis on which to start.

It isn't. No for us. This is the delusion of self. It is especially not about oneself as it pertains to the Christian. Life for the Christian is all about union with God by Grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Life for the follower of Jesus Christ has one end in view, and that is standing before Him at His judgment seat and being deified by Grace. The “me” centrism based Christianity is antithetical to this purpose. Rather than building “me” up, I am to shed “me” completely; being clothed with His uncreated energies through faith in Jesus Christ and transformed by those energies into what God is by nature. The path of Jesus Christ requires abandonment of and death to “me” that I might be rescued. He and His Saints said this repeatedly and lived it in practice. This isn't self-improvement because it requires the total destruction of one's self in order to make progress.

Southern California also tends to be all about having fun, and getting the most pleasure out of life. With the beach right on the doorstep, ski slopes an hour's drive (or two), two theme parks and resorts in semi-walking distance, and countless restaurants, theaters, museums, and places to play it is a cultural mandate here to amuse yourself in someway. It can be said that Southern Californians truly live for the weekends like no one else in this country. Because of this any form of suffering tends to be regarded as anathema. SoCal is all about feeling good, and suffering just doesn't. And yet it is through suffering that we make progress towards that union with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself told us that if we wanted to follow behind Him we were to pick up the means of our own torturous execution and fall in behind Him. This, by its very nature, involves suffering and not returning wrong for wrong.

The truth is that it's hard coming back here after five years of being completely apart from this kind of cultural influence. It feels like we're getting hit with wave after wave of “Me!” “Fun!” and “You gotta have this to be happy!” after being left alone on our own for so long. It felt a little like whiplash after we got off the bus from which, three weeks later, we are only just recovering.

Now, we are going through the hard task of trying to live, find work, get the kids ready for school, and fit in here again while at the same time not being assimilated by SoCal's culture. This is the hard task. We used to ask the question, “How are we as Christians supposed to live in this world without being a part of it?” And I feel like our journey over the last five years has been God's answer to that question as He taught us how to live without the distracting influences.

A Ramble About Andromeda

I've got something to admit. I'm a Kevin Sorbo fan. He may not be a great actor (let's face it, He does well, but the personalities of his main characters don't vary much), but he seems to be a great hero both on screen and off. Besides playing characters on the screen who are really trying to make a positive difference in the world, He himself tries to make a positive difference in the world in reality by being the spokesman and chair of (A World Fit for Kids!”, a non-profit organization that trains teenagers to become mentors to younger children. In what is a rarity these days, he has also been married to the same woman since 1998 (who also happened to play his chief romantic interest in both Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Andromeda).

I've recently become acquainted with Andromeda since returning to California. It's not as polished as some professionally done series but it's actually pretty good. The basic premise is that the “Systems Commonwealth” (read “United Federation of Planets” or “Galactic Republic”) fell and a three hundred year dark age followed it. The Commonwealth Highguard (read “Starfleet”) ship Andromeda Ascendant, the flagship of the Highguard fleet, and its captain Dylan Hunt (Kevin Sorbo) were stuck in a time dilation effect at the edge of a black hole and freed by a salvage crew. For Andromeda's captain, the Commonwealth isn't a memory, it was only yesterday. So, drafting the small crew of the salvage ship he sets out to restore the Systems Commonwealth, one planet at a time, and trying to rescue the populations of three galaxies from the aftermath of the “Long Night”. The show itself was created from the notes of the late Gene Roddenberry, and it certainly feels like it has his fingerprints all over it.

The biggest thing which sticks out to me about this show is that the Commonwealth that this captain knew and served had been gone for three hundred years. It had been torn apart from the inside out by what was essentially a civil war. Imagine if the Vulcans had suddenly turned militant and attacked the rest of the Federation and you've got a pretty good idea of what happened. People were badly scarred by hundreds of years of chaos. What were simple, basic technologies were lost. Any hope of restoring the Commonwealth seemed like a bad joke at best.

But there's this one statement he makes in the very beginning. He says “As long as this ship exists, the Commonwealth still exists.” In other words, the Commonwealth wasn't just a political and military entity. It was an idea. It was an idea that he himself had been deeply ingrained with and believed in deeply, and as long as he and his ship still existed, so did that idea, and so did the Commonwealth which he had sworn to protect.

In many ways it reminds me of the movie “The Postman”, based on a novel of the same title. The premise of the movie was that after an apocalypse which had caused the US government to fall and the country to fall into anarchy, a con man dons a postal worker's jacket in order to keep warm, and then delivers the mail from the truck he took it from to its original destination, lying to the people there about a “Restored United States” government and congressional order to restore the postal system. What begins as a scam grows into a movement and a counter revolution as the idea of a restored United States is passed from person to person and community to community and by the end it becomes a full blown reality.

The reasoning behind both the TV show and the movie is that both ideas are about giving people hope. And when you give people hope and something to believe in, it's a powerful thing that can achieve the impossible. Without it people and societies fall apart and collapse, but with it even a seemingly shattered person or society can be resurrected.

I think that people today are in need of this kind of hope where the Church is concerned. Sure, there are plenty of churches just about everywhere, but the Church itself is about as fractured, pock-marked, and corrupted in places as Dylan Hunt's Commonwealth. Many people, professed Christians, are fed up with the local churches and won't return because of abuse and ridicule they've suffered at the hands of church leadership. Just about every day there's some kind of scandal or story about church leadership hurting someone in some way. Further, there's the fact of the rampant schisms within the Church so that the visible Church isn't unified as one body, but a constantly squabbling, bleeding mass of body parts. Like Dylan Hunt's Commonwealth, it wasn't always this way. There was a time when it was One, Holy, Universal (Catholic), and Apostolic Church from one end of the civilized world to the other.

Dylan Hunt's Commonwealth was eventually, somewhat, restored. I have to wonder, do we want the one visible body of Christ restored badly enough to believe in it? Many churches profess that they believe in it every Sunday, and then continue on merrily in their own schisms. The only reason why it doesn't come to fruition in reality is because those same people who profess it don't actually want it to be a reality. If they did, then it would be.

I do believe in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I believe that all those who are baptized are a part of it. This is the reason why my family and I have attended so many different kind of churches, both liturgical and non-liturgical (which was actually one of the reasons why I was suspended from the priesthood). I don't agree with the way everyone does things. I've read enough of the writings of the Church Fathers to know how they did things to agree with the way things are done today, but that doesn't mean I don't recognize the legitimacy of their baptisms or their inclusion in the Body of Christ. It's also the reason why I've learned to keep my mouth shut about these differences when visiting other churches (no, I don't keep my mouth shut online; my blog is fair game). I believe that we are one Church, and what's more I do try and act like we are one Church. It's sad that in so doing, I think we frustrate and annoy those churches we visit that certainly don't believe that we are one Church. They would like to see my family and I as notches on their Bibles and it's just not going to happen.

As far as I'm concerned the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church does still exist in practice as well as Creed because I still believe in it and intend to continue to act like I believe in it, correcting, rebuking, and encouraging my brothers and sisters and fellow members of the body regardless of their denominational flavor because they are my brothers and sisters Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Evangelical, or Charismatic.

Now, here's my question. Do you actually believe in One, Holy, Universal (Catholic), and Apostolic Church? Are you willing to take the hard road, ignore denominational lines, and act like it? Are you willing to do what it takes to lift our own Long Night?

A Ramble About Infirmity and Disability

"But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Corinthians 12:9-10, ESV)

I'm going to start this one here, with Paul's statement which pretty much defined his life and ministry, most of those years of ministry having been spent behind bars and only able to minister by writing letters to churches he established. Paul knew and accepted something as so foundational to his practice of the Christian faith that he couldn't think of Christian faith and practice apart from it: the necessity of infirmity.

Throughout the Holy Scriptures a familiar pattern continuously occurs, God uses and calls those who are the least likely candidates. Once he does choose them, he humbles them further one way or the other until there's no way that they could accomplish what He has in mind for them, humanly speaking. You see this with Moses, with David, and with St. Paul himself. And, any time they seem to be getting prideful or just too big for their britches, He disciplines them and humbles them further. Thus Moses was sent out to the desert for forty years (and then spent another forty shepherding a bunch of grumblers in the very same desert, and was forbidden from entering the promised land because of a certain self-esteem he displayed); David is anointed king of Israel and then spends years on the run for his life because the current king didn't take the news kindly, then once he became king, he spent more time on the run from his own son who attempted to usurp him. St. Paul was sent out into the desert for a few years after his conversion, and then sent home to Tarsus by the Apostles (essentially losing everything) for an undisclosed number of years before he started his missionary journeys. God decided he needed a pride check, and so either allowed or deliberately gave Paul some kind of physical infirmity to keep him humble. Then, after only a few years, he is arrested and spends more time behind bars than he ever did on the road as an active missionary in the sense we think of ministry.

Suffering, poverty and infirmities are a key component of our practice of faith. St. Paul also wrote:

“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (Romans 8:16-17, ESV)

In describing his own ministry he writes in 2 Corinthians 11:

“Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me, but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands.” (2 Corinthians 11:23-33, ESV)

It was St. Paul's physical infirmity that precipitated the verses with which I began this Ramble:

“So to keep me from being too elated by the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-8, ESV)

God said “No.”

You see, disability encourages humility. Poverty encourages generosity. Suffering encourages dispassionate lovingkindness and compassion. All of these things push us to remain in Him which is the mechanism for our transformation by His energies into what He is by nature (John 15:4-8). He healed the blind man to point people to Christ (see John 9). He cripples others for the same reason (look at St. Paul). For Him, the most important thing is our pursuit of His goal, the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, and this is the method behind whom He heals and whom He cripples. Often, He cripples us physically to heal us of our pride which cripples us spiritually. He makes us poor physically to fix our spiritual poverty. He makes us suffer physically so that we will stop trying to poison ourselves spiritually.

God disciplines His children. We have this bad habit of equating the word “discipline” with “punishment.” Soldiers undergo a severe discipline of physical training, not because they've done anything wrong, but because their bodies need to be strengthened and hardened to endure their life as a soldier and whatever may be asked of them. In the same way God disciplines us even when we haven't done anything wrong, not because He's angry, but because He loves us enough to want us to grow and progress along His path towards union with Him.

More often than not, this discipline involves disability, illness or some kind of physical infirmity in order to train us to be humble (because pride is lethal to our progress). It also often involves poverty to guard us against avarice (the “lust of the eyes”), and can involve physical deprivation to guard against the temptations of sensual pleasure (the “lust of the flesh”). God will use any and all of these on those whom He loves in order to bring us along to His final goal for us.

For Him, it's not our happiness or success in this world that's the most important thing. In fact, these run contrary to His goal most of the time and pull us backwards into the world's embrace. The most important thing is that we continue on His path by Grace through faith in Jesus Christ to union with Him and final deification in the resurrection, and He loves us enough to use any and every means at His disposal to see it through. He knows what's best for us, and what's best for us often hurts, not to be cruel or because He doesn't care, but because He cares infinitely.

There are many of those in the churches today that simply don't want to hear this. They reason that if God loves them, then He must want them to be healed, happy, and wealthy; and if they're not it's because they don't have enough faith, or because they sinned or are in sin. The Scriptural reality, and the testimony of the Fathers is about as far from this perverse teaching as possible. It is the misunderstanding child who kicks against the uncomfortable rules or discipline of their parent because they want things their own way, “if you love me you'll let me do whatever I want!” Any sane, caring parent would send the kid to their bedroom at the very least no matter how long they threatened to hold their breath. Why would God be any different with us? If we are His children, then we will suffer just as He suffered.

God allows us to suffer because He loves us, not because He doesn't. He permits disability, disease, poverty, and infirmity because it's the best thing for our progress, not because we've done anything wrong.

A Ramble About Israel, Gaza, and Iraqi Christians

Two thousand years ago, the Jewish Sanhedrin, controlled by corrupt leadership, illegally condemned Jesus Christ, their own Messiah, and delivered Him to the Roman authorities to be crucified. When the Roman governor balked at the idea of crucifying an innocent man, they stirred up the crowd to threaten a riot if he didn't comply with their wishes. So, he washed his hands of it, and ordered the crucifixion. This is what happened according to the canonical Gospels as found in the New Testament.

Some sixty years later, after that same Sanhedrin spent decades pursuing and persecuting His followers across the near east, the remnants of the Jewish Rabbinical leadership met in Jamnia in 90 AD to discuss how to continue the practice of the Jewish faith without the Temple. They had come to an agreement with Rome that as long as their religion was no longer actively looking for a political kingdom, and wouldn't try to rebuild the temple, they would be left alone. They came to two decisions where Jesus Christ and His followers were concerned. The first was to unanimously declare Jesus of Nazareth a false Messiah and the illegitimate son of Mary and a Roman centurion, something which they wrote into their Talmud. The second was to completely reject the Greek Septuagint translation and compilation of the Holy Scriptures on the grounds that it was this text and these books that Christians were constantly referring to in proving Jesus as the Christ. This is why, to this day, even though the books of the Maccabees record the events of some of the most celebrated of Jewish heroes, and the beginning of Chanukkah, the Rabbis don't accept them as Scripture (and consequently why the argument began among Christians as to whether these books and the other Greek Old Testament Scriptures were canonical).

These are facts of history. No matter how many people would like to erase that fact, nevertheless history doesn't change, only how we interpret it.

St. John wrote in his first epistle, “He who doesn't have the Son doesn't have the Father either.” Again, this is a fact of New Testament Scripture. Twist it how you will, it's pretty self explanatory.

Within the last several months, a Muslim extremist army called the Islamic State has arisen in the Middle East and in a very short time conquered large swaths of Syria and Iraq. They are brutal and ruthless. Where that region's historic Christian population is concerned, they have been even more so. They are ruthlessly rounding up and executing Christians with extreme prejudice by crucifixion, beheading, and other means. The death toll is in the thousands at the very least.

Also within the last few weeks, a terrorist group in the Gaza strip, Hamas, launched rockets into Israel, and Israel retaliated fourfold, killing hundreds of Palestinians, both Hamas and civilians, for every one Israeli life lost.

Between these two conflicts, there is one thing I continuously see on my Facebook wall from well meaning Christian friends, “We stand with Israel!”

Until one pastor friend of mine posted a link to a rare piece of news coverage about the carnage happening to our brothers and sisters in Christ, I didn't even know anything about it. I knew about the conflict between Israel and Gaza, but nothing about what was happening with our family in Iraq.

Let me say that word again, Family. That is what these Iraqis who are being butchered are. Family. Regardless of their denomination they are refusing to convert to Islam and they are entering the presence of our Lord in droves because of it. They are in desperate need of our prayers and any support we can give on their behalf.

The State of Israel is not family. The Jewish people, God's chosen though they may be, are not family. No amount of cuddling up to and support for the government of the State of Israel will change that fact. “He who doesn't have the Son doesn't have the Father either.” This isn't to say that we should not be supportive of the Jewish people, but only to recognize the limitations of that support. The government of the State of Israel does many things which no brother or sister of Jesus Christ should ever support or approve of (just as many national governments do in order to keep themselves in power).

It is good to pray for the safety of the Israeli people. But is it good to do it ignoring the cries and pleas of our own? Do you cheer on the neighbor's kids who are soundly beating their opponents at a weekly baseball game all the while ignoring the pleas of your own who are being raped and murdered behind the stadium? Do you tell them that the neighbor's kids are more important? Are you serious?

I used to attend a Messianic Synagogue here in Orange County many years ago. I developed a deep respect for Jewish culture, the Hebrew language, and the Jewish people there while surrounded by Jewish brothers and sisters in Christ. From there I have always held an affinity for Israel and everything about it to the point where I was almost asked to leave Bible School because of it.

I still hold a deep respect, but a line was drawn between non-Messianic Jews and the followers of Jesus Christ two thousand years ago and it is a line which cannot be overcome or crossed. This is the reason why the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament was written. There came a time when it became safer to be a Jew than a Christian, and some professed Christians were recanting their faith to return to or adopt Judaism. The author of the Hebrews is pretty explicit, there is no return to Judaism for the Christian because there is no legitimate Judaism to return to. It ended with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Please, pay attention to our own brothers and sisters who are being slaughtered for their faith. They desperately need our prayers more than ever.

Incidentally, a large percentage of Palestinians are also Christians. When you support the government of Israel's violence against them, you are supporting their violence against fellow Christians.

A Ramble About Noah

I recently saw Noah the other night. Yes, I realize I'm a bit behind on my movie watching. It just came out on DVD and there's a whole host of movies I haven't seen that have come out in the last few years. It wouldn't be that important except that some of my better rambles have come about after ruminating on different movies and TV shows that I happened to either have watched or been watching at some point in time.

This Noah is one in particular that I've been wanting to see. It's the recent film with Russell Crowe in the title role as well as Emma Watson (Hermione Granger from Harry Potter), Anthony Hopkins (Odin from Thor), and Logan Lehrman (title character in Percy Jackson), all of which are very talented, Oscar caliber actors (OK, Logan Lehrman hasn't gotten there yet, but give him time). I had seen the trailer, read about it in different reviews on news websites, and also seen some pretty negative posts about it on Facebook.

There were, in point of fact, a lot of negative responses to it from different “Christian” reviewers recommending other Christians to not watch it because it wasn't “Biblical.” One that I read labeled it “Gnostic” and spent at least a few pages explaining why it was heretical. I learned a long time ago the hard way to completely ignore most of these kinds of commentary and reviews and go straight to the source. Nine times out of ten, the commentator either hasn't actually seen the movie or read the book he's trashing, or he's seen or read it and simply doesn't understand what the author was trying to say because the worldview he used to see it won't let him interpret it the way it was meant to be interpreted.

There is something about this movie that keeps wanting to ruminate in the back of my mind; something I feel like I need to understand about it. Is it the comfortable Sunday School version of the Genesis flood? No. No, it's certainly not. Does it strictly follow Genesis? That is a point which could be debated. Yes, it does also draw from some other source material as well, most notably the Book of Enoch with the fallen angels known as the Watchers being the source of man's knowledge of technology. Does it take some license in its storytelling? Yes, but really no more than most movies of the “Biblical Epics” genre. Would I recommend it to a Sunday School class? No, because that really wasn't the purpose of the filmmakers. Would I recommend it to people to watch at least once? Absolutely.

Noah is really the story of a man and his family in a world that has been raped and pillaged by the majority of mankind. The world, once a paradise garden, has been over mined, and over forested to the point where there are no trees, and very little vegetation. Animals in general seem to not only be hunted for sport as well as for food (something which is viewed akin to cannibalism by Noah and his family), but you see so few of them you wonder if they have been nearly hunted to extinction. The rest of mankind not only brutalizes the creation, but each other as well and you are left with a graphic (though PG-13) image of the depravity of the human race after ten generations from Adam. Noah's own father, Lamech, is brutally killed early on in the film trying to protect what's left of the creation by other human beings, descendants of Cain who declare proudly that they'll take whatever they want. This tends to color Noah's view of his own species through the rest of his life.

When God begins to give him the visions of what He's going to do, it is left up to Noah to fully interpret His intentions and will, and being a just, but imperfect man, he interprets it imperfectly. As he sets about building the Ark with the help of the Watchers and a miraculously grown forest of trees for timber, he grows more and more convinced that the human race has to completely die out in order for paradise to be restored and for the great wrong which mankind had brought upon the world to be set right. Through most of the movie, the only woman besides Noah's wife is “Ilah”, Shem's wife, who because of an injury is barren and can't have children. When they are all forced to get on the ark without finding wives for Ham and Japheth, he believes that this destruction of humanity must include himself and his family, and that they are to be brought on board the Ark only to see that the innocents, the animals, are safe and delivered safely through the flood, and then they will live out their lives and the human race would come to an end when the youngest had finally buried the rest of them.

Then God throws a wrinkle into this imperfect reasoning when He heals Ilah through Noah's grandfather Methuselah, and she conceives and gives birth on the Ark to twin girls. By this time Noah had already declared that if she gave birth to a girl that he would kill the child to keep her from becoming a mother and repopulating the human race on Earth. When he goes to carry out his threat, he raises the knife and then finds that he can't do it. He can't kill his granddaughters.

After this, the ark makes landfall, and Noah makes wine and gets drunk. Most of his family is angry and hurt by everything he has done (including leaving Ham's girlfriend caught in a beartrap when the rains started) in order to carry out what He believed was the will of God and he is alone and haunted believing that in sparing his grand-daughters he has let God down. Finally, it is Ilah who goes to him and counsels him on what his grandfather had said, that God had left the decision to spare humanity up to him, and he made it by sparing his granddaughters who would eventually become the wives needed by Ham and Japheth. And it is only when he accepts and blesses those girls that God sets his rainbow in the sky promising to never again destroy the world by flood.

I think what's caught me about this movie is that, in it, Noah didn't interpret the will of God perfectly. He allowed his anger, fear, and prejudice against mankind in general to color that interpretation. What's striking about this is that his view of mankind is in fact more or less what the Scriptures teach. It isn't a humano-centric “people are basically good and the world was made for them to conquer” like you might typically expect from a Hollywood Biblical Epic. It isn't a feel good about being human. It's a stark “all have sinned and the whole creation was cursed because of us”. This wasn't just a Bible verse to him, but the daily reality of the world he lived in. And from the deepest part of himself, he wanted to make that right, and making that right, in his mind, required that mankind be allowed to die out.

I have posted my views on Creation and evolution before this. And, in a nutshell, I personally prefer thinking that God had at least a few billion years to enjoy His creation before we came along and ruined it and ourselves for Him. So, the truth is that I can understand and even relate to Noah's issues regarding mankind. Some time ago, I once watched a documentary about what would happen if all of a sudden, all human beings everywhere on Earth were to suddenly disappear. The show progressed this scenario over a series of years, then decades, then centuries. Their conclusion was that without human beings, the Earth's environment and ecosystem would eventually right itself, and return to a pristine condition. The only thing driving this world towards the ecological and environmental collapse that it is headed for is in fact us, mankind.

But Noah's interpretation of his mandate was imperfect. His creator was not without compassion for Noah and his family as representing the best of mankind, but Noah, being a compassionate man, had hardened himself against compassion to do what he thought the creator wanted done. In the end, however, love and compassion won out. The Creator's compassion for mankind in sending two more potential mothers to continue the best of humanity, and Noah's love and compassion for his family as personified by his baby granddaughters.

There are times in our lives when we all interpret God's instruction to us imperfectly, just as Noah did. I remember talking about this very thing with my wife when we would go on walks up and down the road in Arkansas. We both would get things from God; direction, images, things we should do or say, or not do or say and we would try to follow it to the best of our ability. But as we talked we realized that where we always got hung up was in trying to interpret them. We would be given things thinking that they would pertain to just that moment, when in fact we wouldn't actually see them until years down the road. Our RV was a case in point. The first time we started getting from the Lord that we would be going across the country and living in an RV was when we left Tennessee for Idaho back in 2010. We didn't actually do it until 2013.

Noah's problem was in fact our frequent problem. He thought he understood what the Creator's plan was when in fact he didn't. He thought he could take what direction he was given, run it through his own understanding and then know exactly what was the next step the Creator wanted him to take. Had he followed through with his imperfect understanding, he would have become a murderer and sealed the fate of the entire human race. It was love and compassion which stopped that imperfect understanding in its tracks and guided it, even unwillingly and in confusion, back on to the right course and in harmony with his compassionate and loving Creator.

As I think about this film Noah, I am reminded of how many times my wife and I have thought we knew what the next step was for us when we were only just taking the first step. I think the truth in this film is that God doesn't give us the next step until we've completed the step He has given us, and however we misinterpret what that step means, if we use love and compassion as the foundation of what we do He will keep us from going off track even when we're so mixed up and confused that we think the next step is something profoundly disturbing.

One of the biggest lessons we've learned through all of this is that, when God gives directions, don't try to figure out to where they're leading, just follow them. Don't try to guess what's at the end, or set your own goals, or even just try and figure out what you're supposed to do after you've followed the directions you're given. Just do what He tells you. No more, and no less. Go where He tells you and don't try to guess why. And whatever you do, don't tell other people about why you think you're doing it. You'll probably be proven wrong. It's when we inject ourselves and our own imperfections into the equation that we get thrown off the rails.

In the end, I appreciated Noah. It made me think, and I always appreciate stories that make me think.