Becoming (Friday) – Isaiah 45: 4-10

I named my blog site In The Middle With Mystery because that is the best phrase I could think of to describe where I live. I don’t mean where as in my geographic location. I mean where I live in my thinking as it compares to reality – the way things really are.  As a Christian, the bible has effected my thinking in profound ways. In fact it is the bible that binds me to mystery. The following verse from our passage is what has reminded me of just how deep is the mystery I am in the middle with.

Drip down, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds pour down righteousness; Let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit, and righteousness spring up with it. I, the Lord, have created it. 

Instead of righteousness, yesterday the skies above the Ukraine rained down something else; the material and human debris from an airliner shot down en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.  Reports indicate that the plane was downed by a Russian made missile. As an act of war? Did one side gain some advantage by this mindless and heartless act? Of course not. Evil does not need to justify itself. It does not take sides. It simply is. In its apparent randomness it seems to prey indiscriminately upon humankind.

This passage and many others in the bible highlight the sovereignty of God; that aspect of His being that seems to give him final say in all matters. Does God have the final say when missiles strike passenger planes or angry men strike their wives and girlfriends? Or, when a thousand other evils are perpetrated in human choosing? Some branches of theology (that I suspect thrive best in the west) would conclude that due to God’s sovereignty, if it happened it must have been God’s will.  My response to this is, “Impossible! A thousand times a thousand, impossible!” And I read on…..

I am the Lord, and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamityI am the Lord who does all these.

What are we to do with our bibles now? Do we merge the old and the new and say, “For God so loved the world that he causes well-being and creates calamity?!

This disconnect has caused many to never open the Old Testament or to abandon the bible as a benchmark to reality altogether. This is where I have to say that I am working my salvation out in a bit of fear and trembling. I say this because I reject outright the idea that God had an active or passive role in yesterday’s evil or any other of its myriad expressions. But, am I on solid ground with this stance? Where did evil come from in the first place? Did God not create all things? The bible now drives me back toward the idea that evil would not be on the earth if God did not permit it. This troubles and confounds me. I don’t want to be at odds with God. I don’t want to bend reality to fit my preferences. That would be extreme folly. It’s verses like the following that cause some of my trembling….

Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker- an earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth! Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’ Or the thing you are making say, ‘He has no hands’? Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ Or to a woman, ‘To what are you giving birth?'”

I suppose Mystery has become my refuge in a way. I don’t understand the above verse in the light of who I understand God to be so I explain it to myself as a “mystery.”  Hyper-Calvinistic doctrines drive men to think things about God that I will not entertain. I cannot, in light of what I know about God’s love, associate him in any way to evil. If he has permitted its existence on earth, it is for reasons that are light years beyond my understanding. The God who has rescued me from my sin and its consequence is, to me, the ultimate champion against evil and will one day slay it with the breath of His mouth. Here in the middle with mystery I simply say with David,

            Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it. 

I conclude that these are matters that are for now beyond the finding out. In this place (where dogma is so unappealing) I defer to God as my Father. When I encounter apparent random evil, death and disease I ask myself, “What has this to do with my loving, kind, good, powerful and yes, sovereign Father?” I conclude, “Nothing”.

I don’t need to understand everything. All I need to know is that God is good. Jesus came to clear up the mystery as best he can in our time and material bound world. He came as a Man and subjected Himself to all that evil could throw at Him. Evil did its worst to Him and He overcame it in its most malignant expressions. My New Testament bible reality says, “Yes. In this world (because of evil) we will have tribulations, but take courage because Father has overcome the world.”

In spite of evil’s unexplained and mysterious presence, I am betting my life that there is no evil in God. What a worldly philosopher or psychologist would say upon reading this is, “Here we have in this man’s quaint and superstitious indulgence, the anatomy of religious deception; man in his frail and helpless perceptions, inventing a being to rescue himself from the meaninglessness of a cosmos void of any God.” If this same person were to read on in middlewithmystery.com they would be fascinated by the refinement of my delusion. I have 37 years in the middle with Mystery and I have seen nothing but evidence that God is good.

I believe the greatest blows to evil in this world are on their way. These great exploits will be accomplished by men and women awash in the mysterious realities of a good God who will one day (perhaps soon) have his foot on the throat of evil. Until then…

Father, we groaned as we saw the spectacle of evil yesterday and even as this spectacle reminded us of horrors and tribulations nearer to us. We don’t even know how to think or pray at times. Sometime our prayers are even silenced as we are worn down by evil. Thank you though that it is in this place where we feel lost in mystery that you intercede for us with  perfect prayers. Lord, we prefer to navigate by our knowing but where you have deemed us to walk by faith, gird us; that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides You; that You are the Lord, and that there is no other. Help us to press on with steadfastness of heart, clinging to our great certainty, that here, immersed in the middle of mystery, we are with You and You are good. Amen.

excerpt:

Yesterday July 17th, 2014 a Maylasian Jet carrying 295 people was shot down by a Russian-made missile en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. This was pure evil.

In spite of evil’s unexplained and mysterious presence, I am betting my life that there is no evil in God. What a worldly philosopher or psychologist would say upon reading this is, “Here in this writing we have, in this man’s quaint and superstitious indulgence, the anatomy of religious deception; man in his frail and helpless perceptions, inventing a being to rescue himself from the meaninglessness of a cosmos void of God.” If this same person were to read on in middlewithmystery.com they would be fascinated by the refinement of my delusion. I have 37 years in the middle with Mystery and I have seen nothing but evidence that God is good.

 

 

 
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