Sword of Peace

Call to mind the dates of the greatest terrorist attacks in history.

You immediately thought of 9/11, whether you really think it was that bad or not. Maybe you also conjured up 12/7, when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

Many, I dare venture to guess most, of you probably neglected to remember perhaps the worst episode of terrorism ever, which occurred on this day 64 years ago.

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on a civilian center in Hiroshima, Japan. This was done for two major reasons: 1) “obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan” and 2) “making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released”. Put a different way, the bomb was dropped to strike terror in America’s enemy (Japan) as well as the rest of the world.

Mourn and grieve today for the unimaginable decimation of human life that occurred on that day. Pray for the Japanese, who suffered through that nightmare and still suffer its effects today. Pray for the American and international world leaders, who have seen the destruction mankind is capable of, and pray they would never see fit to utilize such means again. Pray for peaceful resolution to global conflicts so that atomic bombs, fighter jets, millenium guns, and battle tanks can be converted into plowshares, combines, and tractors so that we can stop ravaging the land and start replenishing the earth with food for our hungry brothers and sisters all over the world.

The problem of evil is well-documented and analyzed elsewhere; I will not begin by restating it, and will simply launch into my current thoughts on the issue.

Okay, there’s evil. Bad things happen. When something evil happens or is about to happen (read: always), there are three possible reactions:

1. God could do something. It seems to make sense. If God is supremely good and powerful, He SHOULD stop evil (according to our human concepts of “good”, “powerful”, and “should”). A lot of the time, He doesn’t. (Sidenote: nobody really knows, or seems to care, how much He actually might. I didn’t get hit by a truck today, or get shot while riding the subway, or get food poisoning from my sandwich. Are those not acts of God preventing evil? We will never know…) Anyway, does this mean that God can’t stop evil? No. After all, He will. We’ve read the Bible, we see the end of the story – the new heaven and new earth where evil has been vanquished. Why aren’t we there yet? Why didn’t God just put us there to begin with? Why evil in the first place? These are questions most Christians have had to either deal with or ignore, and indeed are questions that have resulted in many Christians renouncing that title.

2. We could do something. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we can take steps to stop or prevent evil. Humans make medicines to heal and protect against diseases. Humans make smoke detectors and fire departments to guard against people’s homes being burned down. Humans take down evil (and “evil”) dictators to stop even more violence and evil. But there are a lot of considerations that go into this point. One, which was summed up nicely by N. T. Wright in a lovely (if long-winded, but worth it) article I just read (here), is the problem of second-order evil. Of human attempts to combat evil, Wright reminds us: “One thing leads to another; the remedy offered against evil has itself the germ of evil within it, so that its attempt to put things right merely produces second-order evil.” The development of medicine leads to the evil of the pharmaceutical industry, the assassination of an evil tyrant turns some soldiers into murderers, and (this is farfetched, so sue me – I wanted to come up with something) smoke detectors may inspire carelessness among people who think “Eh, the fire department will help if something lights up”, causing accidental fires that could have otherwise been simply avoided. Human attempts to combat evil ultimately fail to solve the problem, much like sweeping the dirt from one room of the house into another fails to make the whole domicile clean.

This leads to consideration number two, which I actually just stated but which bears reflection. Human attempts to combat evil ultimately fail. I think that God is allowing us to observe this truth in action until we finally get it through our heads. Could God stop evil? Yes, he could. Could we? NO! You and I and all the soldiers, scientists, economists, doctors, and lawyers in the world are ultimately powerless to eradicate evil. The problem of evil is stated as a problem about the nature of God, but what about us? Outside of God, there is NO hope for a solution to evil or for a total victory over it. Given that, if we reach the conclusion that God is somehow unable to win that victory, then we are absolutely without hope. This places us squarely in the pathetic third category of reaction to evil.

3. We could do nothing. We could become cynics and resign ourselves to the fact that evil exists and just find a way to cope with it. We could hope for the best, but prepare for the worst, and never hope for or claim the victory over evil. For non-Christians, this position is bad enough. Most of that group chooses to remain in category 2, believing themselves able to generate some hope and make some progress toward “good” and away from evil. For Christians, however, this position is somewhere between foolishness and blasphemy. Let’s return to the considerations of the previous paragraph. As Christians, we acknowledge that we are sinners powerless to overcome evil because of the evil within us. But as men and women of faith, we reject that we are hopeless in the battle against evil. Rather, we believe that our God alone is able to grant us victory. It’s that first part that I think God wants us to grasp. The problem of evil is not a reflection of God’s impotence, but of ours. Evil cannot be stopped by our inaction, but it can neither be stopped by our action – it can at best be delayed or shifted around. Thus our sole hope is in this God who often seems apathetic, bringing us back to reaction 1, and leaving us STILL asking why God doesn’t do more.

But He has. God is not, nor has He ever been, apathetic toward evil. In fact, God has already solved the problem. God, in the broken form of a man hanging on a Roman cross, gathered up all the evil and suffering and pain and travail of the world past and present, and said “I am ending this, here and now.” The seemingly inactive God has already acted. The evil has already been defeated. This is a glorious piece of the “already but not yet” of the Kingdom. Jesus’ death and resurrection did not stop evil in its tracks; despots still murder, fires still blaze, and I still lost my girlfriend to cancer at the age of 19. Evil isn’t gone. But it is defeated. This is why our Lord said “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33b)

God doesn’t stop evil because we frail humans are still trying to. We’re still putting forth our best efforts and holding faith in our failing systems rather than trusting what we cannot see and living in the hope that has already revealed itself to us. Sometimes, God still honors that; we know this because the world could easily be a LOT worse than it is. But we by ourselves are hopeless and powerless to stop evil. Even our efforts only point us back to the Creator and His good creation: Who made the plants and compounds from which our medicines are made? Who made the water that puts out the fires? In a world so rife with what we call evil, we find already the good made to combat it. This is why we are reminded by Paul, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” To respond to evil by resigning ourselves to it is to be “overcome by evil”; and similarly, to respond to evil with more evil is the same. But to respond to evil by overcoming it with good allows us to combat evil effectively and simultaneously reminds us of the source of our power to do so. The infamous “problem of evil” is not a problem with God. The problem is with us; the solution is with God.

I’ve been realizing more and more lately that God is beyond all human understanding and description. There’s a certain “part” or “amount” of God that He has enabled us to perceive and comprehend, because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to know Him at all; but in our human finiteness, we are incapable of fully knowing or perceiving God. He is something outside the realm of what our senses and cognitive abilities can get a hold on. We use words to attempt to describe God or parts of His nature, and indeed God uses our words to describe Himself in the Bible, but ultimately all our language can accomplish is to paint a portrait of some shadow of God’s existence.

I am reminded of the passage in Exodus where the Israelites get a glimpse of God’s “back” as He passes by them. I believe it was Rob Bell that pointed out a different translation of the word for “back” more accurately means “where He just was”. We can’t see God, only His trails and shadows and images in this world.

With this understanding that our language and comprehension are limited, how can we say anything about God? The only definition of what God is is what God is. Our words ascribe nothing to Him; He is what He is. Can we even say God is good? What is good? We only know the “good” we have seen. Our minds can’t possibly understand the level of “good” that God is. For this reason, I encourage us to think of God less in definites and more in comparatives.

If anything is “good”, God is better.

If anything is “big”, God is bigger.

If anything is “strong”, God is stronger.

If anything is “lovely”, God is lovelier.

If anything is “kind”, God is kinder.

If anything is “pure”, God is purer.

If anything is “holy”, God is holier.

If anything is much, God is more.

My dad is a card-carrying, sticker-on-his-pickup-truck NRA member. I grew up agreeing with him on the issue of gun control because, well, that’s what I was taught. Turns out I was raised to believe a lot of things that I’ve since rethought. Don’t get me wrong, my dad is a wonderful man and I could not have asked for better parents to raise me; but bless their hearts, the Southern Baptists don’t have EVERYTHING right.

My dad has a gun cabinet full of rifles, shotguns, a pistol or two, and ammunition. Some are for collection, some are for hunting. My dad is an avid deer hunter. (Nevermind how you or I may feel about hunting in general, that’s another subject. And for the record, we do eat the meat – he doesn’t hunt just for sport.) Supposedly, there are three big reasons why gun control laws are a bad idea. One is that people who use guns properly, such as for hunting, should be allowed to do so. Another is that people who use guns improperly, such as for armed robbery, would still get their hands on guns illegally despite legislation. The last is self-defense; some people want a gun around the house for protection in the event of, say, someone (with a gun) breaking in and posing a threat to one’s family.

I’m sorry, does anyone really need to hunt? Venison is delicious, but I can’t justify keeping a stockpile of weaponry in my bedroom – and allowing others who may not be interesting in hunting animals to do the same – just for a hobby like that.

Self-defense could be addressed in a whole other post, but others have done so over the years better than I could. I will summarize by saying that such a mentality, with its defensive and violent nature, is wholly at odds with the teachings of Jesus. A selection of verses to back me up: “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:28) “But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.” (Matthew 5:39) “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44) “Then Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword.’ ” (Matthew 26:52) Also, don’t forget the statistics that having a gun around the house for self-defense more often results in an act of self-offense, such as accidentally shooting someone in the home or a child or teenager “playing” with the gun.

As for the “bad guys” getting their hands on weapons anyway, well, now that we’ve addressed the previous two points, this one’s easy: get rid of guns altogether. Now, in a perfect world, we could say get rid of ALL the guns, but we know that won’t happen. The soldiers are going to have their weapons, and the police offers are going to be armed as well. But we can take measures to get guns out of the hands of the common citizens. No permits, no licenses, NO GUNS. No ordinary person needs a gun for any reason whatsoever. And yeah, for a while, criminals will have their ways of keeping and getting their arsenals. Drugs are illegal, but that doesn’t stop much of anyone. However, with legislation in place to make it illegal for people – including criminals – to HAVE guns, a lot of great strides could be taken, and a lot of intentional and accidental violence could be excised from this world.

Having grown up in a “traditional” church, I sometimes feel that such institutions, despite their noble intents, actually put young and developing Christians at a disadvantage when it comes to seeing the Bible for what it is.

When you attend “Sunday school” every week for years, you get accustomed to hearing an exposition of a small passage of scripture with the purpose of either revealing something about God’s truth or suggesting a means of bettering your spiritual life. Little kids are taught about David and Goliath, Noah’s ark, Jesus feeding the five thousand, and Adam and Eve eating an apple. Somewhat older children might be introduced to lessons from the prophets or the epistles. Then there’s Psalms, which is good poetry; Proverbs, which is good wisdom; some scattered Old Testament books that are about kings and war; and Revelation, which is bizarre and confusing and seemingly vaguely about the end of the world.

They are taught how to read a few verses, possibly in context (but probably not), and figure out what it means for their lives. They then adopt this attitude toward scripture in their personal study of the Bible (if they do even partake in such study), trying to extract big lessons from small morsels of God’s word. In short, we are taught to read the Bible as a loosely cohesive series of stories about God and His interaction with humanity. Because of this paradigm, it is difficult for many lifelong churchgoers to make the leap of taking a step back and seeing the Bible as a closely and carefully woven single story about God and His plan for humanity. Such a realization enables believers to return to their individual stories and begin to tie them together.

The lack of such a realization is what causes many Christians born and raised in Sunday school to reject Scripture in their teenage or early adult years; they cannot see it as one book that tells one story, one narrative, instead of sixty-six (or more) historical tales. They fail to see the beautiful, sweeping romance of God reaching out in love to redeem His fallen bride. They fail to see Jesus as the archetype of Israel, suffering through death and being glorified in resurrection, to demonstrate God’s purpose for His chosen people and eventually His entire creation. They are confused when the New Testament quotes the Old, because they hear not with their ears and read not with their eyes what first-century Jews immersed in their devotion to Scripture heard when the gospel of Christ the King was proclaimed. (Let me also note that the gospel, the good news of salvation, is not restricted to the first four books of the New Testament. The gospel is made manifest all over the Bible.)

Yes, being able to read one chapter and get a significant lesson from it is important. But no author writes a book hoping that its readers will only remember one page when they read it. The Bible is a book, a story, a narrative, and God wrote it so that His readers might see exactly what He is doing. The modern church has unfortunately done well in obscuring its overarching message.

My suggestion is not at all that churches abandon Sunday school; learning Scripture is absolutely vital to building faith and spiritual wisdom. Practically, I believe that any Bible-teaching church should offer a class, perhaps even making it mandatory, for all mature believers – those ready to shift from the milk to the meat – in which the continuity and coherent message of Scripture is taught, a class to help believers previously taught the Scripture in fragments to put the pieces together, to open their eyes not just to God’s plan for them but to God’s revealed plan for all creation. (Indeed, I wonder if many churches have a teacher qualified to lead this class! and indeed, I wonder how many churches would be utterly transformed if the lessons of this class hit home with their members and radiated the coherent gospel throughout the congregations.)