Antithesis

 

The fact that a man/woman loyal to the One True God is perishing, suffering, lacking, isn’t a sign that they are no better off than God’s enemies. Abundance, health, even life, are not
necessarily a sign of God’s favour. “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7-8)

I know people seldomly understand. They judge with eyes of flesh and hearts filled with darkness and they feel justified to conclude my God is impotent and useless because I look beaten. They think they have it good in life because of their daily positive affirmations, because they cleanse their karma and they meditate often and I, with my narrow view and antiquated rules and ideas am just missing the point. They are evolved while I am primitive. They are enlightened while I am still hanging on to superstitious nonsense. They are positive while I am negative. They are constantly growing while I am stuck. It sure looks that way. But I am not concerned with what it looks like. My Redeemer looked like an impostor to the people He came to save. They took The Lord of Life and killed Him. If people were blind when it came to Him, do you think it’s abnormal that people are just as blind when it comes to His followers?

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also.” (John 15:18-23)

“This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.” (1Corinthians 4:1-4)

I have never been silent about The Truth. To the best of my ability, I have always told it to anyone I could. Sometimes without wisdom, sometimes without tact, sometimes without compassion, sometimes in anger, but that doesn’t make The Truth less truthful. It just makes me a very imperfect servant in need of more grace than anyone else alive.

I will probably continue to look very unsuccessful until The Lord takes me home. I will probably continue to annoy some with my stubbornness and be the subject of gossip and psychoanalysis of every unfortunate soul that needs a box to put me in. But for my part, by the grace of God, I will continue to point you to Him, who can and will save your soul if you trust in Him.

"The righteous man perishes, and no one lays it to heart; devout men are taken away, while no one understands.

For the righteous man is taken away from calamity; he enters into peace; they rest in their beds who walk in their uprightness.

But you, draw near, sons of the sorceress, offspring of the adulterer and the loose woman.

Whom are you mocking? Against whom do you open your mouth wide and stick out your tongue? Are you not children of transgression, the offspring of deceit, you who burn with lust among the oaks, under every green tree, who slaughter your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks?

Among the smooth stones of the valley is your portion; they, they, are your lot; to them you have poured out a drink offering, you have brought a grain offering.

 Shall I relent for these things? On a high and lofty mountain, you have set your bed, and there you went up to offer sacrifice.

Behind the door and the doorpost, you have set up your memorial; for, deserting me, you have uncovered your bed, you have gone up to it, you have made it wide; and you have made a covenant for yourself with them, you have loved their bed, you have looked on nakedness.

You journeyed to the king with oil and multiplied your perfumes; you sent your envoys far off, and sent down even to Sheol.

You were wearied with the length of your way, but you did not say, “It is hopeless”; you found new life for your strength, and so you were not faint.

Whom did you dread and fear, so that you lied, and did not remember me, did not lay it to heart?

Have I not held my peace, even for a long time, and you do not fear me?

I will declare your righteousness and your deeds, but they will not profit you.

When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you!  The wind will carry them all off, a breath will take them away.

But he who takes refuge in me shall possess the land and shall inherit my holy mountain.

And it shall be said, “Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people's way.”

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:

“I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of life that I made.

Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain, I was angry, I struck him; I hid my face and was angry, but he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart.

I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners, creating the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the Lord, “and I will heal him.

But the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt.

There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.” (Isaiah chapter 57)

 by Cristina Pop

Hope

 

There are many awful feelings one can feel, but I think none of them does so much damage to one’s soul as feeling forgotten. That’s the closest point to giving up because it drains you out of every ounce of hope. And hope is up there with faith and love to keep one going in life.

 For a child of God, one for whom all his/her springs are in God (Psalm 87:7) meaning that everything good and lovely has its roots and foundation in the Person of God, when they reach the valley of feeling forgotten by God, their whole world gets dark. All their mechanisms for coping are in God, there’s nothing else they can draw on. Unhealthy? Probably from a humanistic perspective, but not from a Kingdom perspective. God has ruined us forever towards this world. Nothing else will do, except Him. That’s our strongest feature and our worst weakness. How? Well, all the enemy must do to incapacitate us is to convince us that God has forgotten all about us. All he has to do is make us doubt God’s love for us. He will allow us to continue to think God is holy, and sure He cares for His obedient children, so logically, you’re forgotten because you’re a mess. He would act on behalf of a righteous person, but you? He barely tolerates you in general, now that you’re in a valley, He can’t even stand to look at you. Sounds familiar?

I wish I could say, I recognize his lies from miles away and I never fall for them, but sadly no matter how much I train for it, I still fall. Yes, it gets really dark at times. Luckily, I serve The One for whom even the darkness is not dark; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with Him. (Psalm 139:12) He didn’t just send us as lambs amid wolves, He gave us His Spirit and He is the One reminding us of everything we’ve learned in daylight. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26)

Today I remembered Rahab. She had the worst job and lived in the worst place on earth. There were many places that God wanted destroyed in the land of Canaan, but none came close to the awfulness of Jericho if its epic demise is anything to go by. And there this woman lived. Meaningless existence, day in and day out. A woman with no future. Yet in between many moments she’d rather forget forever, she keeps hearing stories about this nation of slaves from Egypt, whom God, The Only God, has freed and was leading them through the desert towards her land. And this God was so committed to these ex-slaves that He had defeated every enemy that came against them. And Rahab dreams what it would be like to be so loved and so protected. She imagines what it must be like to find favour in the eyes of such a God. But they’re just stories. And she continues her meaningless existence, and the stories keep multiplying. Years go by and she’s long given up her silly dreams. Now she’s just scared because in His determination to do good to His people, this God is bent to destroy everything in His way. And she’s not stupid, she knows she’s in His way too. And then out of nowhere, on a day just like all the other meaningless days before, two men come in her home. They’re Israelites. They’re spies. They’re on the run. She knows she’s in danger just for letting them inside her house, but they’re His people. She looks at them trying to find outstanding features that would make The Most High God so attached to them. But they’re normal people. They have eyes and hands and feet like everybody else. It makes no sense. She’s always thought one would have to be some superhuman to attract that kind of love and devotion. But if they’re normal, maybe then there’s hope even for her… Impossible. She decides to hide them. She lies to save their lives and then she asks them to spare her family. She doesn’t beg for herself, but for those she loves. She asks them to swear to her by The Name of God. They do, so she lets them down from the city wall with a rope. The word chebel in Hebrew can mean rope, but also great pain or ruin. (Joshua 2:15) The spies recognize what it means for her to know she will be killed and still save them. So, they tell her to tie the rope to her window so they will recognize her house and spare them. When they use the word rope, they use the word tikvat in Hebrew (Joshua 2:18), and if anyone is familiar with Israel’s national anthem, Ha Tikvah (the hope) they know tikvat means hope. Where she used despair to save them, they saw hope. The spies return and Jericho falls. The spies save Rahab and her family, and she becomes a part of the people of God. (Joshua 6:22-23) If one reads carefully through the account (Joshua ch. 2-6) it’s painfully obvious that the spies didn’t do anything else in Canaan. They didn’t have any James Bond mission, nor brought back any information that had any bearing whatsoever on the conquest. It’s almost as if God really, really wanted to save Rahab. What’s even better, Rahab marries Salmon, and she has a son, Boaz. She teaches him to be kind, and he will be kind, so kind that he will marry Ruth, a Moabite with no apparent future. Rahab will be in the line of king David and even better, Jesus The Messiah, Son of God.

You might be in an awful place right now. So awful that you know it’s going to end badly. You might not even dare to hope you’ll be spared. After all, you’re not some holy person. I’m not gonna lie, it might get very bad. God might not spare the Jericho you’re in, but the same God that spared the life of a prostitute from a place like Jericho, can surely spare you. Just trust Him. And hope…

 

by Cristina Pop

 

Inconspicuous

 

I was listening to Dr. Joshua Bowen’s deconstruction testimony. What’s deconstruction you ask? It is a phenomenon within American evangelicalism in which Christians rethink their faith and jettison previously held beliefs, sometimes to the point of no longer identifying as Christians.

Dr. Bowen was a very committed pastor that has spent most of his life preaching Christianity with the same passion he now preaches atheism. In his testimony he was sharing how he was accepted into John Hopkins for his doctorate in Sumerian studies, and he saw it as an opportunity to share the Gospel with the academicians. But things didn’t work out that way. By his own admission, it took him 45 minutes to deconstruct his faith. I thought “that’s absurd!” but kept on listening. At some point, to better illustrate the journey to his conclusion that The Scripture is all nonsense, he gave this little ‘parable’ of a married man that keeps coming home late. The wife asks him, ‘why are you coming home late every night?’ he answers that it’s for work. The wife doesn’t like the explanation, but she concludes it’s reasonable, so she takes it. Then he starts coming home both late and smelling of perfume. She gets more suspicious, but he reassures her that the colleague siting at the desk next to his puts on way too much perfume. She doesn’t buy it, but she thinks it’s possible, so she accepts his explanation. In a week he gets home late, smelling of perfume and with lipstick marks on the collar of his shirt. She confronts him and he answers that he had dinner with his mother, and she had tripped and fell on him and thus the lipstick marks on his shirt. She’s had enough. She’s no fool. The explanations are silly, and she decides to break it off. In Dr. Bowen’s mind that’s him and Christianity. The silly explanations Christianity had to the bigger questios just weren’t cutting it anymore when faced with better evidence for a different world view. Dr. Bowen then proceeds to berate the morality of a God he doesn’t believe in and wishes all Christians would wake up from this fantasy.

I have no problem with Dr. Bowen’s atheism. I have no issue with the happiness and freedom he finds in his belief in ‘non-belief’. I don’t subscribe to blind faith. I believe in careful investigation and weighing things until they either add up or they don’t. If that’s his truth, then so be it. What I do find issue with is that little story of his. I don’t believe Dr. Bowen realises that even in his parable, he chose to illustrate a relationship between two beings, not between a person and some inanimate object or some mathematical theorem. In a very tragic sense, I think he views himself as the poor wife that has been cheated on because he thinks God has somehow cheated. I think that’s truly sad. 

It's a little fantastical to me that a well educated, well read, well articulated person, can give up a whole belief system in 45 minutes. I am quite mediocre in my education, but still my first instinct when I hear a well constructed oposing argument, isn't to throw out every notion under the sun, but to go and look if there might be something I've missed while forming my opinions. I always asume the Truth is true no matter what, so if I feel lied to maybe I need to look deeper. In Dr. Bowen's case, he's not the only Christian scholar faced with akkadian writings, ugaritic texts and summerian studies. How come they haven't lost their faith while translating tablets and inscriptions? Why wasn't his first instinct to go look what they had to say? What minimalistic conviction do you have to posses in order to be shattered that fast?

I wish I could say that he’s a special case, an exception. There are hundreds like him out there. Their stories sound very similar. They’re all so disappointed and disillusioned with the whole notion of God and they all regret having wasted their time on this matter. You’d think they all suffered some immense tragedy that led them to their disenchantment, but no, most of them have just stumbled upon something they read or heard that rang very true within them and that’s that. God doesn’t exist. What’s more they think their assertion makes them brave. With a public announcement they’ve erased God, poof!

While I was listening to Dr. Bowen I kept seeing in my mind the apostle Paul while he was stating his case before Festus, King Agripa and Berenice in Acts 25, 26. Them with all their pomp and him smelling like only a caesarean jail can make you smell, in chains, trying to defend himself and his faith from accusations that were calling for his death. He was telling the truth, but this truth did nothing for them. He was a living illustration that the Truth can do nothing for you. Their world was a world where you have your little amulets and household gods and you do your little rituals and they reward you with health, money, love, luck. If one god doesn’t provide, no worries, there are a million others to appeal and one is bound to work. No need to suffer, and what kind of loving God would allow His protégé to end up in chains, in a dirty prison in Caesarea? No god worth his salt would just observe and do nothing while risking to lose your devotion.

Truth is there in front of you. You can sit on your throne and look down on it as much as you like. You might recoil from its modest apparel. It might look ridiculous in its chains and dirty clothes. Its appeals to your conscience might sound unsophisticated, but that’s because it’s not trying to impress you with its eloquence, but rather point you where to run for safety. That’s the tricky part, to recognize Truth. It’s not easy but start by looking for the humblest looking thing. Hint: it’s the only one not out to deceive you while everything else is.

“And Agrippa said to Paul, “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?” And Paul said, “Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am—except for these chains.”” (Acts 26:28-29)

By Cristina Pop