Black and White

If only we could tell the bad guys from the good guys by their black and white hats things would be so much easier. The world is rarely that simple. But then again some things are black and white.

Once again Americans in the service of arms are in harms way in foreign lands. There are people who, in good conscience, oppose the war. They have that right. It is a right that was deeded to them by men who fought and died for it in wars past. Some quote things like: “If war is the answer, it must have been a stupid question!” That, in itself, is overly simplistic and more than a little stupid. Sometimes war is the answer. Sometimes economic and political pressures don’t have their desired effect. Sometimes all diplomatic efforts fail and nations are left to slug it out. There’s always a bully in the schoolyard who won’t get the message any other way. That is what it boils down to.

War has served to end political oppression over millions of people. It has served to end slavery. It ended the genocide of European Jews. It ended Nazism and Japanese imperialism and it has freed enslaved peoples the world over. For whatever other reasons this one is being fought, it is serving to bring freedom to people who have never known it in their lifetimes.

This much is black and white to me. Osama Bin Laden and his kind are pure evil. In acts of cowardice they commit mass murder without provocation. Some will argue it’s not cowardice if you’re willing to commit suicide in the act… It ‘is’ cowardice to murder unarmed, innocent people who don’t know you’re coming even if you die in the process. I’ve heard liberals say we should try to understand them. ‘We’ are the ones who need to learn tolerance…not the men who murder innocent people in the name of their religion. That attitude is far worse than simplistic and stupid…it is collaborating with evil! That too is black and white.

Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. He and his regime deserved to be toppled…and killed. Whether he was linked to the 9/11 mass murders or not, whether or not he had weapons of mass destruction (something believed by many administrations in many nations for years)…he deserved to be toppled. Whether or not we should be the ones to do it may be a question but the bigger question is, if we don’t do it…who will?

The innocent men, women and children who suffered under his regime didn’t deserve the atrocities they were subjected to… This man used poison gas on his own people and invaded his own neighbors. His men raped, pillaged, burned and stole whatever they wanted. They killed and destroyed things…just because they could.

The innocent men, women and children who are dying every day in Afghanistan and Iraq don’t deserve it. Sometimes we forget about them in the mix. The soldiers and marines who are dying every day so far from their homes don’t deserve it either. At least they have the consolation of dying for something they believe in. They are spilling their own blood to set oppressed people free. What higher value can we have as Americans?

There is a price to pay and we all end up paying a part of it. The soldiers and the innocents who die pay the greatest price. So too the families who are torn apart, the children who will never know their fathers and mothers, the friends and relatives who will never see their loved ones again…they all pay a price. It tears marriages apart. It inflicts harm on almost everyone it touches in some way. The psychological damage that war inflicts on its survivors is almost immeasurable.

No mother or father would want to lose a child in any way…much less to lose one in war. It is simplistic to think anyone in their right mind ‘wants’ to go to war. But Thank God there are always men and women willing to do so even knowing the price they may pay. By their actions, the sights and sounds of freedom are being seen and heard in places where they’ve never been known.

Maybe we are creating a new generation of terrorists. It is irrational hatred of Americans and Jews that fuels our enemies and, by definition, no rational arguments will sway them. But we are giving many, many others a taste of freedom. The psychological effects of that are immeasurable too…

Jesus the Christ taught us that: “No man has greater love than to lay his life down for his friend”. That’s what soldier’s and marines do every day. The least we can do for them is to support them in any way we can. And no…I don’t believe you can support them without wanting them to win and to complete their task. The American military has fought to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves, for our posterity and for our fellow man. That’s an American value and it, too, is black and white.

Sacrifice

Close your eyes and imagine for a moment that you’ve raised a pet calf or lamb since it was a newborn. You’ve fed it by hand with a bottle and later with solid food every day of its life. You’ve cared for it through sickness and health. You’ve protected it from predators. You’ve sheltered it from bad weather. You’ve named it and it knows the sound of your voice. It comes to you when you call. It is a part of your household…a part of your family.

Now imagine that you are told you must take a knife to its throat and take its life for some wrong you’ve done.

When the moment comes you clasp your hand over its mouth and raise its head. You slide your other arm over it and put the blade of your knife to its exposed throat. You have to firmly hold it in place while you press your knife to its flesh. It doesn’t move because it trusts you. You then feel the flesh rip open as you draw your knife across its throat opening its veins and arteries; its esophagus and wind pipe. You hear it cry out and feel its body shudder in your hands and arms. Blood spills from its throat. You feel the shock and the terror it experiences at its life being taken by a trusted caregiver. You hear it gasp for its last breath and you feel the life pour out as blood spills over the ground at your feet. You have to tighten your grasp to hold it in place. In a few moments, that seem longer, it finally relaxes and goes limp as the last nervous reflex is spent. Its lifeless body slumps in your arms.

You’ve just taken a life to pay for something you did… Disobedience is something you now realize earns death. You feel the loss of the pet you’ve raised since birth. It had to die because of your disobedience. It took your place. The seriousness of your act is pressed home by the life you’ve just taken to pay for it. That’s how a sacrifice should feel…personal.

Now imagine that the very Son of God steps out of eternity into a mortal body to walk among us. His love for us is so great that He offers Himself up as a sacrifice for our disobedience. A part of the Eternal God who created everything we can perceive, who created you, a speck of dust, on a planet that is one of billions in a galaxy that is one of billions in an unimaginably endless universe. You, this speck of dust, are so important to God that He was willing to submit to that cruelty, to that humiliation, out of love…for you. Disobedience to Gods law is that serious. That is a part of the Gospel, the Good News, of God to mankind.

To accept that sacrifice, to feel the loss personally, to accept responsibility for the actions that demanded it…that’s what we are called to do in calling ourselves Christians. Our calling goes beyond that though. Our calling is to return to obedience to our Creator. That’s what repentance means…to return to obedience. He gave us His law as a gift for our good. His law is proof of His love for us. Our obedience to His law demonstrates our willingness to accept His authority in our lives. Obedience was never intended to ‘earn’ salvation…it's not a salvation issue…it's an issue of Love for our Creator. It’s also an issue of love for ourselves and our fellow man. Breaking Gods laws often ends up hurting someone else and it always ends up hurting us.

Sin, disobedience to Gods law, is so repugnant to Him that He wants to impress it upon us in the most precious thing we have…our life’s blood. It is our blood that is demanded after all. His love for us is so great that He gave His own in our place.

That act doesn’t do away with the need to keep the law of God…it does away with the penalty for breaking it. The sacrifice of Jesus the Christ doesn’t do away with the need for Gods law in our lives. It was not a license to disregard it. We are still bound to obedience to God. Our disregard of Gods law is disrespect for Christ’s sacrifice.

Christ’s very first words when He began His ministry were: ”Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” He’s already made the sacrifice. He gave His life's blood to give you the chance to atone with God. What are you prepared to do for Him?

Idolatry

It is something of a psychological comfort for human beings to construct images of God for themselves. It makes the universe, the unknowable, feel within our grasp…within our control. Most forms of idolatry aren’t in stone, wood or metal. They are in our minds. We can construct images of a higher power, a great spirit, in our mind and worship what we have created without the aid of a piece of stone or wood. We can give our image whatever characteristics and whatever names we desire.

The mystical traditions of many cultures believe we can gain some measure of control over a thing, or a being, if we can find it’s true name, it’s secret name. This is somewhat akin to waking up in the morning to find hair growing out of your knuckles, your eyes turning red and a funny taste on your tongue. The first thing you want to know is: What do I have? You go to your doctor and he examines you. After consulting his library, and looking appropriately serious, the doctor comes back and says: You have Lycanthropy! (Now, you have no idea that your doctor has just told you that you are a werewolf…) You are relieved to hear that there is a name for what you have because if there is a name for it, then we must have some control over it. You see naming something is a kind of idolatry. We limit a thing by naming it. We can now pigeonhole it and, instead of dealing with the real thing…we can deal with our mental image of what it is. You might say the control is all in your head.

Every culture on earth, throughout the ages, has created an image of God, or gods, in their belief systems. That image may fit whatever ideals the people have at the time. Some gods are bloodthirsty, some fickle and some very unsympathetic. In our own modern culture we are encouraged to turn to our own ‘higher power’, our…god, “whatever we conceive that to be”. The gods of the world reflect the values of the men who conceived of them. We, humans, usually conceive him to be something we’ve seen in the natural world…a part of creation.

God is NOT a part of creation. Scripture reveals that God is outside of creation. Some things about Gods nature can be gleaned from His creation…His sense of beauty for example. But we should never limit God by anything in creation. If you are a person of Judeo-Christian faith your image, your conception of God, ‘should’ come from one source…the Bible. In reality many ideas about God, even for most Christians, don’t come from the ‘Revealed word of God’. Many of our conceptions come from human traditions. Many that come from human traditions are a form of Idolatry. None of our conceptions should contradict what is revealed in scripture. We aren’t going to ‘get it’ perfectly…but we should always strive to understand Who God is and what His values are. Believers should reflect The One True Gods values…not the other way around.

It is ironic that many professing Christians that wouldn’t dream of bowing down to a false god, do so regularly. They bow down to a god, not revealed in the scriptures but one, conceived of by human beings and taught in human traditions. Such is the concept of a god who would allow a newborn child who dies, or a person who dies in a culture or time wherein the Gospel is unknown, to suffer in an ever burning Hell-fire. That is not the Just, Righteous, Merciful God revealed in the scriptures. That is someone’s image of god based on a misunderstanding of scriptures and on a counterfeit spiritual tradition. We are never going to fully understand Gods nature, not as mortals anyway, but the things we need to know have been revealed to us.

What we believe about God matters because we act on our beliefs. Where we get our concept of God matters because any source other than the scriptures ‘can’ lead us into idolatry. There is only One God and to understand His nature we must study the scriptures. That’s where He reveals Himself to us…

Does your god reveal your values or does your life reflect Gods values?