God and Evil (or, A Rose Out of the Mud)

"Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men! For He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness; souls that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron.
"Because they rebelled against the words of God, and despised the counsel of the Most High, therefore He brought down their heart with labor; they fell down, and there was none to help.
"Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke their bands in pieces. Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men." Ps. 107:8-15

This passage's series of events is a fascinating spectacle. It starts by exclaiming that only the goodness of God can satisfy the longing and hungry soul, souls that sit in darkness without the goodness of God. To ask how they got into such darkness is to ask how they lost God's goodness (for apparently the two cannot coexist: you have either one or the other, never both). They lost the goodness by their rebellion against God's "word" and "counsel," i.e., His authority as God. In response, God let the consequences of their rebellion fall: a horror of great darkness fell upon them, and when all had abandoned them ("there was none to help"), then and only then did they look to God for satisfaction.
That last part is the most interesting part. Here is revealed a deeper application of Joseph's oft used (to ad nauseum) phrase that God works evil for good (Gen. 50:20). Rebellion against God (in any sense) is the proper understanding of Sin, and the natural consequence of Sin is Death (Rom. 5:12; 6:23). Now, it seems that the Psalm is explicitly saying that God's immediate response to Sin is to not shield people from its consequences. He actually lets the death and darkness fall, the disease and destruction wreak and rage, the evil and the wicked pollute and corrupt. The honest man asking sincerely (and the skeptic asking sneeringly) will ask, "Why?"
The answer is startling: "Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble" (emphasis added). It seems that God actually lets us go astray so that we will learn (1) what the right way is and (2) to stay on it when we get there. Think of it like this: God alone is the satisfaction of the soul. Thus, every time we head to something else other than Him, He will let us go and starve on its hollowness until we finally (like the prodigal son) "come to our sense" and cry out for what is truly satisfying, which is only found in God.
Only a moral coward would call such a set-up "cruel". Many today whine for God to shield us from every possible ill, but such a recommendation (however sincere) is intolerable for two very good reasons: (1) The issue of free-will. True free-will is contingent upon the possibility of true evil. Thus, to actually "shield" us from all ill would mean doing away with free-will, reducing us to mere machines, beasts, or other subhuman and inhuman entities. Therefore, to ask for Him to shield us is to not know what we are asking; we have requested that God spare us from one cruelty by inflicting us with another, i.e., the loss of our humanity. (2) The necessity of "the hard way." It is just plain old practical truth that sometimes the most merciful course of action is to allow one to learn things the "hard" way. If a truly free-will agent utterly refuses to heed your sound and truthful warnings and advice, then sometimes their refusal and subsequent disastrous consequences are the only way that they will finally heed. Such a fact is common sense, and to deny it is to accept blatant ignorance for the sake of argument.
This is not to say that God never shields us. Indeed, there is much that He shields us from (e.g., Ps. 105), and much more that we will probably never know. The point here is that God's modus operandi with people is not mere shielding anymore than it is mere allowance of the consequences. The point is that if your stubborn rebellion (whether you are an unbeliever or one of His children) leads you into the deathly consequences of Sin, their is a gracious miracle at work: the very consequences that seem so horrid are the very things that will lead you back to God. The sovereign will of God has decreed that out of every evil work, redemption will bud like rose out of the mud.

-Jon Vowell

Two Realities of the Christian Life (plus a Third)

"The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea." Ps. 93:3-4

Herein are two realities of a Christian's life: the trials and tribulations of the world and the faithfulness and goodness of God.
That troubles are here equated to "floods" is apropos. We often feel inundated by the cares of life, a seemingly endless stream of discouraging distractions. From the sorrows common to all men (disease, death, etc.) to our own particular heartaches and pains, they are always like a flood: overwhelming and relentless. Scripture nowhere promises that in this life we will have a lack of troubles.
It is good to know, therefore, that God "is mightier" than all the troubles of life, and equally apropos image; for when we are in the midst of struggles, nothing seems "mightier" than it. Thus, it is like music to our ears to hear that our God has clothed Himself with a strength that is mightier that all the waves of sorrow and care (vs. 1).
"Thy throne is established of old; Thou art from everlasting. [...] Holiness adorns Thine house, O Lord, forever" (vs. 2, 5). Herein is a third and final reality, a truth that we all gladly hand our hats on: troubles. though overwhelming and relentless, are also temporal; only one thing is eternal, and that it our God and all that He is (i.e., His holiness). The valley of the shadow of death is a real yet temporary thing; it is goodness and mercy that shall follow you "all the days" of your life (Ps. 23).

-Jon Vowell

Our Dwelling Place

"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty. [...] Because thou hast made the Lord...thy dwelling place, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling." Ps. 91:1, 9-10

These thoughts are not fanciful idealism; they are solid, practical truths of life. It is true that your physical dwelling, possessions, and relationships may be touched by evil and plague; your own body may be as well. Such is the way of the world. However, when God is your true dwelling place, nothing can ultimately touch, for God, His character and His promises, are sure and secure. The soul that is "hide with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3) may be beset by many troubles, but they will never be shaken. This is not prosperity gospel; Job 13:15 and Romans 8:37 encapsulate these truths more than the tenets of prosperity dogma. The one who has made God their dwelling place has become fundamentally unconquerable, and evil and plague can never truly touch them again, though the body they may kill.
"Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him.... I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him..." (vs. 14-15). Deliverance necessarily implies that one is in the midst of something, and it is a hard truth that much of human life means being "in the midst" of things. Nevertheless, the one who has made God their dwelling, their love, their one and only desire, will find deliverance, whether it by a miracle in the moment or death that gives way to victory. Like the Lord, the Christian is to put no stock in the people and things of this world, for we know that they are fallen and fragile, and will fail (John 2:23-25). Instead, our hope is in the eternal God who is and neither falls nor fails, and whoever dwells in Him shall never be moved (Ps. 15).

-Jon Vowell

A Place for Darkness

"Behold, I have refined thee, but not as silver; I have tested thee in the furnace of affliction." Isaiah 48:10

It is to the glory of God that pain and suffering are not meaningless. The ravages of sin upon this earth have done nothing to deter His holy will, and the evils of affliction He has harnessed as refining fires. Any Christianity that does not make room for the horror of great darkness is a false Christianity.
Those who claim that darkness and despair, pain and suffering are issues separate from Christianity know nothing of Jesus Christ: "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.." (Isaiah 53:3-5). The life of our Lord was bound up in the glorious victory that God had wrought over affliction, a victory wrought by passing through affliction. Would to God that His children would grasp this truth: Christianity touched upon all the areas of life, including the dark ones. The Christianity of amiableness and gaiety, of sunshine and flowers, is not the Christianity of the Cross, the Christianity of refining fire. Do we really believe that all things work together for good? That afflictions are the fires that refine us and draw us to God? The world needs such good news.

"The Refiner's Fire,
Has now become my soul desire.
Purged and cleansed and purified
That the Lord be glorified..."
(from Steve Green, "The Refiner's Fire")
-Jon Vowell

Bread and Water

"And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed...but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it..." Isaiah 30:20, 21

We are such wimps as Christians these days. All the creature comforts of American suburbia has completely washed out the rock-solid ruggedness of the Son of God. He gave His back to the scorners to be bruised and broken; we won't even mention Christ to the mailman. He took His bitter cup and drank it; we run into our convenient Lexus cages at the mere sight of the bread and water of God.
That's another thing we miss: adversity and affliction are our bread and water, i.e., our nourishment. This is the working out of the idea "God's strength in our weakness" (see II Corinthians 12:7-10). Adversity and affliction are to make us crumble onto the hardy bedrock of God Almighty so that He might build us up with His strength. The troubles of this life are our nourishment: they make us stronger. We do not seek them, but we do not reject them when God brings them to us.
"...thine eyes shall see...thine ears shall hear..." Our life is not completely bound up in trouble. Some days we take the bread and water of troubles. Others we take the bread and wine of His Presence. One day we will feast on milk and honey. All these, however, are nourishment indeed for our souls, and we should accept them with thankful hearts.

"Build up this Limp Jellyfish
On the Bedrock of Your Presence.
May I fear no more..."
-Jon Vowell

The Hand that Smites II

"And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again [depend] upon [Assyria]; but shall [depend] upon the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth." Isaiah 10:20

This is to be the result of the smiting of God: a solemn return to sole dependency on God. Israel once looked to Assyria for help. Now they will go back to the true source of all help: the Holy One of Israel.

Too many of us think that God smacks us upside the head because He wants us to fix something we did wrong. You have no such power in you to fix anything. God smacks you upside the head so that He can fix you. The true problem is not what you did wrong, but what went wrong inside you that led to the wrong that you did. When He smites, return to Him so that He may correct you. Let all else go, including your desire to fix it yourself.

The devil would have you turn to self-pity. God smacks you and you collapse into a quivering pile of wimp jelly, constantly blubbering something about how "wrong" you are, or "bad," or "sinful," or whatever. You are completely on the wrong track. Self-pity is self-focused, and therefore it is a form of pride. God does not want to hear how wrong you are. He knows how wrong you are; that's why He smacked you in the first place! He wants you to return so He can fix what's wrong.

The prodigal son had a speech prepared upon his return, but his father would not let him finish it (Luke 15:17-24). Job answered God by confessing his sinfulness, but God was not satisfied with that answer (Job 40:1-7). Repentance is not stating what you've done; that is confession, which is step one. Repentance is step two, and it is simply returning to God. May His blessing and smiting draw us closer to Him.

The Hand that Smites

"For the people turneth not unto Him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the Lord of hosts." Isaiah 9:13

God is not being malicious when He smites. He is not a sadist (Lamentations 3:32, 33). He finds no delight in causing affliction. Affliction is a necessary evil. It is always meant as an attention-getter, meant to make us turn around and seek God in the matter. If He smacks you on the back of the head, like any good father would do to a misbehaving child, He does not want you to wilt like a dead flower and whimper like a quivering puddle of spinelessness. His smiting is to smack you back to reality so that you, with all the power and honor of a child of God, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and say as Samuel said, "Here am I, Lord."

How quickly we fade like chaff in the wind under the hand that smites. It should not be. Through Christ we come from hardier stock, i.e., the bloodline of God Himself. There is no whine or whimper in a child of God, only the rousing of yourself up by the power of the new man within to seek the Lord while He may be found.

"There is no possibility of lying like a limp jellyfish on God's providence," says Oswald Chambers. God's smiting is meant to rouse you to seek Him, not shatter you into whining pieces of self-pity. There is no backbone in Christendom anymore: we do not really believe that all things are working for our good, including the smiting of God.

Leave It Alone

"And all the people...that say in the pride and [arrogance] of heart, 'The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycamores are cut down, but we will changes them into cedars.' Therefore the Lord shall set up adversaries...against [the people]..."

Isaiah 9:9-11

This is the inverse of the marriage petition: "What God has torn asunder, let no man join together." There are parts of us that must go, elements in our lives that may not be necessarily bad, just not God's best. There are things in your life just now that God wants to raze to the ground so He can rebuild with something better. It may be a habit, a ministry, a relationship, or whatever; it may even be something good and noble from the human standpoint. Whatever it is, God wants to take it away and give you something better. He wants to exchange your tin for silver.

However, we stand in God's way and cry, "No! I must have this! I cannot bear to let it go!" You must if you are to have God's best. We try and rebuild what God is tearing down, and we find ourselves fighting against God. If we resist, God will not force us; but we will have sacrificed the best for the good.

God does not expect us to bring calamity and poverty on ourselves and go live in a cave. What He does expect is for us to trust Him so much and hold everything else so loosely that when He rearranges your life for your good there will be no pain, no frustration, no despair, only the sweet joy of seeing your Father intimately working in your life.

If you try and rebuild, do not be surprised if you face divinely appointed adversity that lets you know that what has been torn down must stay torn down. May our fingers grasp only to God, and may all else be shadows.

The Great Physician

"Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and convert, and be healed. Then [Isaiah] said, Lord, how long? And He answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate..." Isaiah 6:10, 11

When Isaiah cried that he was a man of "unclean lips," God immediately met his need (Is. 6:6, 7). Then when Isaiah cried that he was in the midst of people of unclean lips, God immediately...brings desolation? abandonment?
Why does God not come and heal? Is God cruel? No, it is because there are some things that do not need healing; they need removal. Scars need healing; a tumor needs to be removed.
We are seeing here the two sides to the Great Physician: "...I wound, and I heal..." (Deuteronomy 32:39). Sometimes God will gently soothe our wounds with the balm of Gilead. Other times He does the wounding; He cuts right through us so He can hack away at what's killing us. Whether He wounds or heals, however, it all works for our good.
There was a part of Israel that did not need healing, people that were the source of corruption and deadness; that part needed to be "wasted," "desolate," "removed," and "forsaken" (Is. 6:11, 12). We forget that a physician not only prescribes and administers medicine, but also performs surgery, which is a type of wounding. So it is the same with the Great Physician. Sometimes, God's healing comes in the wounding. Remember, the greatest healing came from the greatest wounding (Isaiah 53:5).
"But yet in [Israel] shall be a tenth, and it shall return...as an oak, whose stump remains when it is cut down: so the holy seed shall be the stump thereof." (Isaiah 6:13) Sometimes there must be a pruning of the branches; other times, the whole tree must be cut down so it can start over. In addition, even the pruning is not guaranteed to be pleasant: either it is done by the gentle hands of the gardener or by a storm that tears the dead branches loose. Likewise, sometimes the only true healing is the wounding that cuts out the deadness so what is alive can grow again.
As the Great Physician, God will heal your wounds and get the deadness out. Isaiah's lips needed only to be covered ("purge" in verse 7 means to "cover" or "atone"); the people needed the desolation that gets the deadness out. God has no qualms with getting His hands dirty, whether it be in regards to you or in regards to others.
"And He said, Go, and tell this people..." (Is. 6:9). God may want to use you to get the deadness out of others as well as use you to heal. When it comes to being used by God to wound, or if we are seeing someone being wounded by God, we must not become what Oswald Chambers called "amateur providences," i.e., we suddenly think we have a higher moral sense than God and we cry, "They shall not suffer!" They must if they are to be whole.
How many times have we stood in the way of God's healing for us (and others) because we refuse to partake in the wounding that brings the healing?

Affliction

"[Jerusalem's] adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions..." Lamentations 1:5a

As Christians, we must never lose the sense of what is "behind the scenes." We practice the sense pretty well sometimes in spiritual warfare: it is not our friends, family, co-workers, or bosses; not strangers, circumstances, or our imagination. Something else really is "in the way," as Lewis put it. In our way is an enemy that hates us and longs for our destruction (of course, see I Peter 5:8).
It is easy for us, however, to assume that ALL affliction comes from the enemy. This is not a cliche slap at prosperity gospel: you can believe that Satan is responsible for all your problems and also believe that God is behind it somewhere. In a case like that (Satan/demonic affliction with God behind it) you are in the position of Job: your affliction comes in order to test your faith, i.e., to see where your reality lies (whether with yourself and circumstances or God and His will).
The problem is that as Christians we can slip into the dangerous position of believing Hell is responsible for ALL of our problems, and hence ALL affliction is a testing of our faith. This is not true. There are two positions of affliction: one is of Job, affliction to test faith and correctly focus your reality; the other is the position of Jerusalem, where affliction comes because of your "transgressions."
In the first position, God is the Ultimate but not Immediate source of your affliction; the Immediate source is the demonic powers. In the second position, however, God is all in all, the Ultimate and Immediate source: "The Lord hath afflicted...for the multitude of transgressions."
When Christians slip into the deceptive stance of always being in the first position, the truth that God must punish sin is lost to them in regards to themselves. They surely see that truth in the lives of other's, but in their own life all affliction is a test of faith and not rebuttals from God, the Immediate affliction of the Lord.
"For the wages of sin is death..." (Rom. 6:32a) As with all overstated verses, the punch and the power gets lost in the telling. We must never forget that sin ALWAYS brings death (see also Rom. 5:12), and that does not change when you are redeemed into God's family through Christ's death and resurrection. When you are redeemed, you are no longer sold under sin, and therefore no longer held to its ultimate end, i.e., eternal death. But the NATURE of sin does not change: it always brings death. This is not a cruel joke God played on humanity; it is simply a fact, an absolute, the way things ARE. Sin cannot help but bring death, because sin is (as Dorothy Sayers put it) choosing the "not-God," and anything that is not God (that is not the way, truth, and life) is confusion, lies, and death. James tells us that wisdom comes from God, and in Proverbs wisdom says, "All they that hate me love death." In the end of Deuteronomy, God tells his children that there are only two paths that He has set before them: life and death. Those are our choices: life or death, God or everything else. And as a Christian, if you sin, if you willful choose the not-God, then as Oswald Chambers put it, you "work the death sentence on yourself," and God will not let it stand.
He is not cruel in this. He is being two things that He cannot help but be (because they are a part of His nature): He is being Holy (because holiness cannot tolerate sin: the Holy God sent His Holy Law to kill sin), and He is being Love (Proverbs 3:11-12). The beauty of being a redeemed child of God is that God deals with you in holiness AND love, an impossibility made possible through Christ (more on THAT subject in another note). If you were not His child, he would only deal with you in holiness, and the end dealing of holiness with sin is to cast it into outer darkness.
As His child, however, God will send affliction on your for one of two reasons: (1) to test your faith; or (2) to punish sin, because His holiness will not tolerate it, and His love will not let you stay fallen in the mire (Heb. 12:6-8). God sends affliction for our good (Rom. 8:38): if we are strong, He will make us stronger; if we fall, He will pick us up and whip all the filth off of us in the process.

Days of Darkness

"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun: but if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity." Ecclesiastes 11:7,8

It is Plato who is famous for giving us the theory of the sun as Truth that gives us light, and therefore clarity to see reality. Although Solomon lived a long time before Plato was born, it is not at all improbable that he was aware of the same logic.
There will be days when we are walking in the sunlight, everything is clear and bright. We have a good idea about where we are going: we see the road before our feet, we can see immediate obstacles, and the world is alive and colorful, beautiful and harmless.
Then come the days of darkness, when the sun is hid, and we feel lost in a land of shadows, constantly being fooled. All obstacles seem large and sinister, our surroundings look ready to eat us alive, everyone we meet is a stranger and a shadowy figure, and the road has disappeared before our eyes.
"Let him remember the days of darkness." We all look at the dark times and say, "I'd like to forget that." We must not! If we are God's children, and therefore all things work together for our good (Rom. 8:28, remember?), then that means that the days of darkness are just as valuable as the days of the sun. God never sends us through things willy-nilly, though we may go through them helter-skelter. As Oswald Chambers said, "We never realize at the time what God is putting us through; we go through it more or less misunderstandingly..." Then we step back into the sun and see more clearly the road we went through in the dark; and what God teaches us in that moment of clarity, we must not forget, and be thankful that there are many days of darkness, for with them will come many days of clarity.