Justice on a 7 Billion Person Scale

I heard on the radio the other day that the world’s population has reached 7 billion people. That number exploded in my head. It led me to a YouTube video on some University’s website that showed population growth throughout history. I saw how the United Nations is projecting that by the year 2100 there will be over 10 Billion people in the world. Those are big, big numbers in a small, small world. (It is a small world after all, isn’t it?) Essentially more people are being born each day then are dying.

If this info makes your mind jump to where mine did, then you know what I’m going to say next. I looked it up and scholars estimate that anywhere from 150,000 to 180,000 die each day. That would be the equivalent of Guam being sucked into the ocean each and every day.

Turkey just had a horrible earthquake that has left families trapped in the rubble, and many are still sleeping in tents and in their cars out of fear of more aftershocks. Still, at last count, far less than 1000 people have died in the earthquake. I’m not saying that this catastrophe was not tragic or that it did not affect hundreds of thousands of people. It did however only represent about .6% of the deaths that occurred that same day. I don’t know how to put death on that scale into perspective.

A student recently shared with me the story of Herod killing all the babies around Bethlehem, found in Matthew 2. He said that he didn’t believe that there was a God, but if there was, he was obviously cruel. “How could a kind God allow other innocent babies die so that His own son could escape and live?” He commented. That was the first time someone had shared this story with me from that perspective.

A few days later I started reading through the book of Matthew again. It didn’t take me long to come across Herod’s horrible act, or as my student put it, God’s failure to act. It got my wheels turning again and so I decided to spend some more time wrestling with the reality we all live in.

What about Herod, or more importantly, what about the question of God’s goodness? Does God’s seeming lack of intervention in Matthew 2 mean He is cruel? It would be very easy to turn this into ethics debate. Do the deaths of a group of innocent children justify the eventual hope of salvation of us all? I worry that putting the conversation in these terms cheapens the value of life. I don’t believe God looks at life in those terms.

It would be just as easy to look at the culture and context of this story and begin teaching the problem away. Herod was a bad man you know. He had lots of people killed for lesser things. There are lots of accounts of Herod killing big groups of people and asking questions later. When you think about it Bethlehem was a small country town. Even if you included the infants in the surrounding villages like Matthew 2 describes, the number of children killed could have been less than 100. You could go on and on. That might all be important information to better understand what exactly happened in Matthew 2, but it still doesn’t make the big question go away. Is God cruel? Is this story proof of that?

My student really got me thinking. My faith didn’t change, but I knew this was something that I needed to wrestle with, so I did. I came to a few conclusions:

Death is an experience I don’t understand and I can’t avoid.

It is a reality that hits our planet on a huge scale every day. I read Matthew 2 and see God sparing Joseph, Mary, and Jesus from a corrupt ruler’s hands. I see children in Bethlehem being murdered at the hands of Herod. I think the author of Matthew shared this story because it really happened and the prophet Jeremiah prophesied that it would (See Jeremiah 31:15). I don’t see this as proof of God’s cruelty. In fact I don’t see God as cruel at all.

God loves justice and promises it.

(See Job 37:23 or Psalm 9:16//11:7//33:5)

A leader or ruler’s job is to maintain order and ensure justice. God entrusted Herod with that job and he abused it. That doesn’t mean that God stopped serving justice. Herod’s act of evil did not go unpunished. God saw to it that those children and their families were given justice. In fact, Josephus, a Jewish historian, records that Herod came down with a ‘loathsome’ disease. Josephus credits the manner of Herod’s death as ‘Judgment from God on account of his sins.’ Herod didn’t get away with anything, and God did not sit idly by and watch it happen.

We need to trust Him even in life’s cruelest of times.

He deals with life and death on a mind numbing scale. He watches injustice on a grand scale and still honors our free will. I do not entirely understand why God spared Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel 3, but let Stephen die in Acts 6 and 7. I do believe we are created to bring God glory and reveal His glory to others. Living and dying is all a part of that. God is above and beyond me, but at the same time he chose to come down and live alongside of me. I don’t know his thought process in every decision he makes, but He is far greater than me and I trust that He is good. The author of Revelation describes God’s final triumph over evil in Revelation 19. God is seated on a white horse. He has come to right the world’s wrongs and bring justice to us all. He is called Faithful and True and He brings Justice as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. All will be made right. This is a very good thing.

Fake Faith in a Genuine God

A thought hit me the other day that has continued to surface in my day to day life. I thought to myself, "Isn't it wonderful that I'm a hypocrite?" Yeah I know I am sounding like I'm crazy, but a few days later I actually told someone else about my eureka moment. They were a little perplexed. Being a hypocrite is not something most people are proud of at all.

Let me explain. I try to follow God in all areas of my life. I try to fill up with His Spirit so He can overflow into the lives of those around me. I teach others about God's word and His amazing message. Right now our Student Ministry is teaching each other about what it means to be Faithful in all areas of our lives. Here's the truth though: Nobody is Faithful, Nobody is Perfect and It's super-hard to try to be. Stick with me here, we are getting really close to the wonderful part of this.

God is faithful. God is perfect. It isn't something he 'tries' to do it is simply who he is. I am a hypocrite who tries to be faithful, but I fail a lot and more often than not my faith is pretty fake. God is the genuine thing though. There is nothing fake about him. How wonderful is it that our feeble and often fake faith is placed in a God who is real, true, and able to keep His promises.

Our High School Guys Sunday Morning Group talked about James 1 yesterday morning. James talks about fake faith. He compares it to people who literally can't remember what they look like. He essentially is saying, "Hey if you have met God, you are going to remember it!" Listen to what He says in James 1:25 (The Message)

"²⁵But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action."

Take joy in this awesome truth today! In all of our fakeness and failures. He is the real deal and those of us who stick with it, we will find delight and meaning in our action. It's is wonderful to know that even me, the hypocrite, is loved by the genuine God.

An Adventure in the Unexpected

When Alicia and I found out we were going to be parents we started praying for our unborn child. We prayed our baby would know God's love and share God's love with others. The thing we probably prayed most often is that our child would always sense God's adventure in their life.

Robert Frost described life as a journey. Rascal Flatts recently reminded us that life is a highway that is intended to be driven all night long (Someone needs to explain that philosophical perspective to me. Is it better to drive only at night or is it that when we are going to drive for 12 hour stretches that night driving is best?). Our Constitution says that life is our God-given right and that we should have the freedom to pursue happiness.

I've recently been reading Karen H. Jobes commentary on the book of Esther. In her commentary Jobes discusses the unique nature of Esther in the Bible. The book does not mention the name of God nor does it mention prayer. Still, in what seems like the absence of God, amazing things happen in this historic account. God is present in amazing ways even though He is not listed among the cast of characters. The story is immensely powerful. So much so, Jews imprisoned in concentration camps during WWII would recite the entire book of Esther from memory. This bothered German soldiers to the extent that they forbade them from reciting the story because of the message it carried with it. Jobes used an interesting word to describe what happens in Esther's powerful story. She calls it Peripety.

I had never heard this word before so I looked it up to see exactly what meaning she was trying to convey. Peripety is when something totally unexpected happens seemingly out of nowhere. In Esther's case, right when you think all of the Jews are going to be killed, God uses Mordecai and Esther to save His People. That is peripety. As I looked up this word I found out that the history of this word actually carries with it the idea of adventure. After all, aren't the best adventures filled with unexpected things around every corner?

Alicia and I continue to pray for our son Zeke that he would always sense God's adventure in His life. Today, that's my pray for me and for you. That we would see God's adventure. That we would experience His Peripety in our lives. That just when we feel like He has abandoned us or that He is far from us that He would reveal himself in powerful ways.

Whether your life is a journey, a highway, or a pursuit, may you always sense His Adventure.

Andy's Sermon

I thought Andy said some really relevant things to us all in the Gathering Place this Sunday. For any of you that weren't there Andy talked about Christians being the salt of the earth. What he meant by that (It comes from a passage in Matthew 5) is that we are supposed to bring flavor to the world. We are supposed to be different.

Take some time to have that conversation at your dinner table with your family, or at the lunch table with your friends. What makes you different? How do people know you Believe in Jesus? Are we really any different? Are we relevant, or just a bunch of ignorant hypocrites? What does it mean to be salt? How does Jesus want us to be different? These are all vital questions to be asking ourselves. I don't ask myself them enough.

I just wrapped up talking with a senior who is going to be getting baptized soon. He really showed some maturity in our conversation. He is going to use his baptism as a chance to tell and show all of his friends, just how important Jesus is to him. He sees his life as an opportunity to reveal God's glory to other people. I think he is starting to truly understand what it means to be salt, and that is what being a worker in God's Kingdom is all about.

Our God is Near, Our God is Here

Every person who believes in a personal God (myself included) goes through times when they do not feel like God is close to them, or vice-versa. For whatever reason we just don't recognize His presence, or we don't see His fingerprints around us. These times can be really disheartening, and discouraging. But it is always an incredible feeling when you realize that God has not gone anywhere, and that He has been present the whole time.

This morning in Staff Meeting, Paula our preschool minister was praying for us. She is such an encouraging and thoughtful person. As she was praying, you could just see God's character in her words, and she really blessed us all by her prayer. We talk about the church being the body of Christ, but this means even more to me thinking about Paula's prayer. To think that we get to be God's hands and feet to each other means so much when we think about it this way. God has made our hearts, His home. To grow closer to God, all we need to do is grow closer to each other.

That thought just floors me! Dinner with my wife last night, was actually breaking bread with Jesus. I just had a staff meeting with God my Father, and this morning when I had breakfast with Aaron, the Holy Spirit was working on both of us. Colossians 1:17 says, "He (Jesus) is before all things, and in him all things hold together. " Our God is near. In fact, our God is here and he is holding us together.