Tormenting Righteous Souls

A few weeks ago another one of our states registered into the written law of the land an official determination that what God has called evil is actually good.  By human decision, it has been decreed that this evil will be sanctioned by the government, elevated to the status a sacrament has in the church, and taught to children as a higher good.

I had already been grieved by a much more individual sin – the discovery that a person who calls himself a Christian, and believes he is both in relationship with God and seeking God, was directly and blatantly lying to others about a particular event.  Instead of repenting when confronted, he justified his actions and made clear his determination to continue in them.

It was when my heart was grieving over the number of Christians who don’t obey Jesus (or even the rules of basic morality) that New York announced its decision.  One scripture kept running through my mind.  It defines the saints’ predicament, as we live in such an upside-down world, and is actually about Lot, “for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.” 

That is so.  I don’t know how you’ve been feeling, but every day I read the news I torment my righteous soul.  Not only are terrible things happening, terrible things are being done.  Humans are setting themselves above God, actually thumbing their noses at Him – intentionally!  Almost worse, evil is not only rampant in our nations, it has infiltrated our churches…so that if we could see the spiritual realm with our natural eyes, we would fall on the floor and weep over the sheer number of those around us who are being crowded and poked and pierced by demonic spirits of witchcraft and perverse sexuality and rebellion and the like.

This weekend my state of grief was intensified, when I came face to face with yet another instance of real sin and bondage in the life of a true believer.  When I was younger I would have grown angry – self-righteous and angry.  Today I grow sad.  Sad and begging for God to do something supernatural (for that’s what it will take) and douse us sinners with grace to be free, and mercy to cover; with desire for holiness like His, and with compassion strong enough to help one another limp into that throne room to receive these gifts. 

There is evil all around – everywhere wickedness.  To me it feels like the noise of a piece of modern, dissonant music turned into its physical equivalent - shrieking shards of sound and glass coming from all directions, swelling inescapably louder and sharper, piercing my ears and mind and eyes while I moan and crouch and mourn over the cacophony, over what it feels and sounds and looks like, over how painful it is when it hits my ears and how perverse it is when it hits my eyes.  This is what unrighteousness feels like to the righteous soul. 

We feel all this, and our souls are simply righteous because He gave us His own righteousness. What must it be like for Him, the Original Righteousness?  If I curl on my basement floor to the music of "Heaven & Earth" and weep, praying for the church to be made pure and brought near, for Him to return and make everything right and holy - to banish evil - what must He be feeling?

I did weep like that.  I couldn’t help it.  I am that grieved.  I keep praying for mercy, that in mercy He will pour out grace to escape temptation and deception and sin.  That our holy and love-filled God would be honored by how we think and what we do, not maligned by it. 

During worship this morning I remembered the phrase “as far as the east is from the west” and began seeing the distance from here to the exact opposite side of the globe, for that would be the farthest east-west distance possible.  Once forgiven, I could go looking …walking, searching, seeking… for one of my sins, and at that distance, it could take me years to find one.  Just one!  Then the Spirit prompted my mind to step back a little and stop being so myopic.  How far is east from west, in all of the created order?  As far as the far east of the galaxy is from the far west of the galaxy?  Wait, no – as far as the far east of the universe is from the far west of the universe.  I would never find that sin.

I see you Jesus, so big, so big - so big that my very important, very evil sin is absolutely removed from me (and certainly not worth a million-year-quest to re-find).  Since this is the case, since you are so capable and I can be so righteous, can’t you change our hearts so that we WANT to simply bring our sins to you so you can hurl them that vast distance?  It has become very apparent - our own hearts keep evil cyclical and recurring.  Our own hearts.  Our own hearts love our sin more than they desire You.  Have mercy, Lord!

Corey Russell preached on the knowledge of God, and summing it up, at the end of the service, with every hand over every eye, he led the entire congregation in a real and corporate prayer of repentance and renunciation of a certain kind of evil – of looking on perversity and wickedness with our eyes and in our thoughts and through our hearts.  My soul was trying to burst out of my body, as I heard the sincerity in my fellow believers, and in my own voice...as I watched a tidal wave of forgiveness and righteousness wash through and past us, leaving the entire thousand of us standing just as solid and immovable in the same spot, but entirely clean, while the flotsam and jetsam of degrading passions and sins went floating away behind.  We are righteous!  We can be righteous tomorrow!  We will be righteous forever! 

Jesus is right.  He is much, much bigger than one sin or than our millions of sins.  Oh, that we would seek his kingdom and his righteousness.  And then, someday when he has come back, the righteous soul will never be tortured again.

“Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage?  He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy.  He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities.  You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea…”  Micah 7:18-19

A Lack of Knowledge, or the Hating of God?

A few days ago I met a man who took the beauty bait and entered into a long discussion on God (whose existence he does not acknowledge) with me.  For several hours as we talked I silently asked the Spirit for direction - logic and arguments and reason would not bring light to him, so completely was he decided in his mind and so highly did he hold his own understanding.  Yet as much as I asked, Jesus did not give me the one prophetic word, or right tack, to use to convince him that God existed or even that it was worth investing time into the question.

I found it an exercise in frustration - and at the same time joy.  I love getting to proclaim aloud the truth about Jesus, especially to people who think I'm ridiculous and openly insult me because of it.  Yet, the longer we talked the sadder I became - I don't often meet people who seem to me to truly fall into that category of the wicked who are "bound and determined" to be eternally lost.  

As I prayed for him, I found myself asking an unusual favor of God (the queen can do that).  Though this man had rejected the multiple messengers the Lord had already sent him, would the Lord for my sake sovereignly reveal Himself anyway?  Simply because I asked?  (For Lucy's sake, in the Last Battle, Aslan speaks to the self-blinded dwarves.  But I wanted even more than that - I wanted his full salvation.)  

Several currents were constant in me as we talked.  First, I was intensely frustrated by my inadequacy as an apologist.  All the statistics and details and knowledge of other religions and memory of how to counter certain arguments -- these were gone from my mind.  Second, I was excessively disappointed by the silence I heard in answer to my prayer for prophetic power and understanding.  I desperately wanted to know what the real root was to this man's blindness.  If only I could get at that directly and address it.  Why wouldn't the Spirit just tell me?    

In the days since I have thought much and prayed often over him.  Remembering our conversation, it became clear to me that although the man claimed not to believe God even existed, he had exhibited an extremely deep and personal hatred and anger toward God.  He did know God was real - he simply hated Him.  And instead of understanding that God went to the extreme measure of dying to save him from a condemnation he was already subject to, he blamed God for carrying out any judgment at all against sin and wickedness.

To my shock, today, Allan Hood preached a sermon on this exact subject - almost detailing word for word the content of my conversation with this man.  Eerie.  No, not eerie.  Divine.  And yes, I was right -- there are two basic realities that man did not understand, and Allan delineated.

1.)  Man hates God.
2.)  God loves man.

Apologetics and prophetic insight were not what would reach this man, because the root of his blindness was not a lack of knowledge or a lack of physical revelation (he had already spent much of his life studying the beauties of nature, which themselves reveal the existence of God if one has a heart to perceive).

The truth is the dead spirit of man hates God.  It is utterly devoid of the life of the Spirit of God.  To pansy around the reality of death - that something is dead - means to leave it to that death.  If we, as believers, are not clear on the stark difference between life and death, between God's kingdom and Satan's kingdom, we will not be able to lead the dead ones back into life.

This is a subject the Lord has been harping on in my life for the last year. In the novel I'm working on I wrote quite a while ago this line - "A woman cannot marry a corpse" as the heroine takes a final stab at explaining to an unbelieving man why she cannot enter a relationship with him.  Mike's recent sermons on Romans, on walking in the Spirit, have been highlighting and solidifying this distinction - the great gulf between the Spirit and the flesh, life and death.  It's something we must be entirely clear on in order to truly preach the real Gospel.

I'm thankful for the object lesson this conversation was, and the way the Lord followed it up with a clear confirmation of what He's been teaching me.  I am more determined than ever to walk this way - according to the Spirit, able to explain the difference between life and death.

And at the same time my heart longs for this man - he is more than an object lesson, he is a creation of the Almighty, and I will be satisfied with nothing less than his eternal salvation.  Apologetics and prophetic insight are not what will pierce the blackness of death.  Only the mighty Spirit of the living God can do that, and intercession is the one great tool I have to effect the lifting of blindness off his heart -- Lord, make me an intercessor!

An Egg is an Egg

A fictional scenario...

I made eggs for the woman living with me. She thanked me breezily, savoring their taste. I like putting a tiny bit of milk, salt, and cheese into a few beaten eggs. It brings out the taste. The next day, she returned the favor, making not simply eggs, but what might be called an omelet, for it had vegetables cut up into it. Pleased with the result, she made eggs again the next day, improvising a little more with extra spices and one less yolk. Over the next few months the vegetable component of the eggs she cooked increased. Once she discovered tomatoes, and how nice they tasted slightly warmed, that became the predominant ingredient. But tomatoes make eggs watery. Her solution, I noticed was to begin using a bit of flour in the mixture with the egg. (Yes, we were down to one egg, and mostly vegetables, which she would set before me every morning with the happy comment: “Here are your eggs.”)

The vegetables had to be sautéed before going into the mixture, and she began experimenting with a little meat. Meat in the morning, she said, could be a very helpful protein boost. She tried ham, bacon, ground beef, and chicken, settling on the chicken as the nicest, lightest option.

“Here are your eggs,” came the cheery greeting each morning. Actually, it was mostly chicken and tomatoes, with piles of sautéed zucchini, mushrooms, scallions, and red bell peppers heaped over the top. Oh, and an egg, mixed with quite a bit of flour in a cream sauce, to pour over at the end as a sort of gentle concrete. Except, without the yolk part. There was enough protein in the chicken, she decided, and getting rid of the yolk might cut down on some cholesterol.

But of course, cream doesn’t go very well with vegetables like those, at least not in my taste-bud world, nor in hers. So before another week was gone, so was the sauce. And, um, the egg white that had been in it.

“Here are your eggs.” She happily laid the plate before me, a wonderful conglomeration that reminded me of a chicken cacciatore.

I suddenly laughed. “Actually, this isn’t eggs. It’s yummy, but it’s technically not eggs.”

“Yes, it is.” Her voice carried a tinge of huffiness. After some back-and-forth she expounded on her thoughts. “The term ‘eggs’ is a name, really, for nutrients in the morning. It means breakfast, basically. This is eggs,” and she pointed again to the cacciatore.

“In the context of food, ‘egg’ is an unfertilized reproductive body of a chicken or fowl, consisting of an ovum – a yolk – and its envelope. Chicken cacciatore is not an egg.”

“You’re being offensive,” she said quietly and politely, restraining anger. “There is chicken in here – and those eggs you’re talking about come from chicken. Which makes this more truly an egg than your supposed egg itself!”

I looked at her in wonder, very surprised. This had been happening over the months, I suddenly realized, and it had never occurred to me to correct her morning “Here are your eggs” statement, for it had never occurred to me that a human brain would be capable of calling one thing, another thing.

I must confess, I think I stuttered. It wasn’t over the stupidity of the statement. Many stupid things are said every day. It was over the fact that she actually believed what she was saying.

I tried once more, kindly slipping to the refrigerator, pulling an egg from the carton, and bringing it back to the table. I laid it next to the cacciatore. “This is an egg,” I said. “An egg is an actual, real thing. Your wonderful dish is simply not it.” The red mass of veggies and meat laid in a great, steaming pile next to the cool, oblong, white shell I had set down.

Anger in her movements, she whipped the plate away from me and I had no breakfast that morning, whether egg or cacciatore. I was a bit preoccupied – concerned, would be the word – as I made my way to work. How was her mind when it came to other things? Was this some strange sort of senility? She was only 36.

A horn honked behind me. Oh – I hadn’t seen the light turn green, lost in thought as I was. As I looked up and pressed the gas, a grocery semi-truck turn left in front of me, having decided not to wait any longer. I slammed on the brakes. The car stopped in time for me to watch, in slow motion, the huge advertisement plastered on the side of the semi. A Beaver-Cleaver family, in retro dress, gathered around the kitchen table. With healthy smiles on their faces, and succulent heaps of red cacciatore on their plates, the caption read: “Every good day starts the right way. Eggs!”

* * *

Sounds like an episode of the Twilight Zone, right? Well – perhaps not as exciting. I watched an interview last night between Jennifer Knapp and Larry King, then went to bed thinking about the ridiculous hijacking of the Christian church. There really are people out there (a lot of them, actually) who are not followers of Christ Jesus yet insist on calling themselves Christians. There are multiple reasons, on Satan’s part, for using this particular strategy – I won’t go into them here.

What struck me last night, as it often does, is how unmovable truth is. Whatever is said, whatever is claimed, doesn’t change reality. One could keep one’s dead cat in the house for days and days after it had been run over, and continually say that it is alive. Tell your friends and family it is alive. Talk to it like it is alive. But that cat is dead, dead, dead. Sorry to say it, but no amount of make-believe on your part is going to change the dead deadness of that cat.

If God grants that His power would flow through me, I’ll be perfectly happy to come to your house and raise that cat from the dead. But until I do – that cat is DEAD. Truth doesn’t change depending on what’s in our imagination at the moment, or on our tongue.

I am looking for the day when the church as a whole will adhere to scripture. I’ve sometimes wished that we could call another of the great old councils, and let the Body of Christ at large publicly disavow as ‘Christians’ every institution, organization, and denomination that does not adhere to the basic tenants of Scripture. But as I think of it, I realize that this era of double-talk may naturally draw to an end when persecution of Christians arises. On the other hand, it’s possible the liberal pretenders to the name will succeed in utterly hijacking the word (Christian), and real believers will be prosecuted and killed as the ones pretending to the name. I can’t predict at this point. Which means right now there is nothing I can or should do except speak the truth – even if that requires boldness and a willingness to be hated for it. So here, friends is the truth (not from me, but direct from the Holy Spirit through the apostles):

1Jo 3:4-10 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. (5) You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. (6) No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. (7) Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. (8) Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. (9) No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. (10) By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

I love Mike Bickle’s distinction between sincere believers who repent when they fall (which we often do) and on whose record of sin God presses “delete”, and fake believers who use “grace” as an excuse to cling in love to their sin and continue in it. (The word “fake” is mine, not his.) These are two very different hearts, and will be treated two very different ways in the final judgments, just as they are treated two very different ways in scripture. Read the above passage with that understanding. Let condemnation be out of the question for the former (believers), and let conviction be deep for the latter – those who are, according to this passage, “of the devil”. I’m sorry to call them such, but it is the truth, and if no one says it out loud, we will all be guilty of having watched them race toward a long and painful existence of separation from all they were made for, and of having done nothing.