Month: September 2013

The Choice Before American Christians
Copyright 2013 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

Biblically-orthodox Christians in 21st Century America are beginning to feel the cold winds of public rejection in a society that has seemingly reached a real tipping-point in rejecting its Judeo-Christian foundation. While the erosion of freedom of religious conscience is still in its opening stages in this country (and is nowhere near the level of the sometimes murderous prejudice against believers elsewhere in the world) it is becoming clearer by the day that a true persecution of the American church has become a very real possibility in the not too distant future.

It is now when two ugly temptations begin to rear their ugly head. On one hand it is difficult to resist the pull to endanger our loving witness by digging in our collective heels, “circling the wagons” and angrily fighting against the winds of change with all the remaining tools at our disposal as citizens of a constitutional republic. On the other is the even worse choice of accommodating ourselves to the world’s current idea of what is “Progressive” and losing not only our witness but our souls as well.

There is, however, a third option. Bible-believing Christians in the United States can decide to humbly trust in the ultimate victory of Christ and choose to suffer in hope as our oppressed brothers and sisters in other times and places have always done. In this spirit we can also choose to love even our enemies as we continue to hold to the eternal truths of the faith. This might be the most difficult of the three choices, but it is also the truly godly one.

While it is accurate to affirm that the Apostle Paul was not above using the rights of his Roman citizenship when he felt his part in spreading the Gospel would be facilitated by it he also had no illusions about converting the culture of his time through political action. He knew that it was the Holy Spirit that changed individual’s minds and hearts, not an effective lobbying campaign. Many times he chose not to stand on his civil rights and instead endured the persecution his public beliefs brought upon him. I think Paul would tell us to do the same. He might not call us to be completely apolitical, but he would say that our first citizenship is always in the Kingdom of God and commend our willingness to suffer for the sake of making Christ known to the world. In other words he might advise us to be, as someone once said, “a patriot only to Heaven.”

While modifying our theology to fit the deceiving spirits of this age should not be an option for any committed Christ-follower the truth is that this choice strongly appeals to our fallen desire for acceptance and ease at any cost. It has always been relatively easy to be a theologically orthodox believer in this nation. The fact that that this state of affairs appears to be coming to an end is a difficult pill for many of us to swallow, but that does not mean we are not called to swallow it. Anyone who permanently chooses comfort (even a comfort that once almost seemed like a sort of American Christian birthright) over the harder road of authentically self-denying discipleship is not worthy of the name Christian.

The key to not going down either of these wrong roads is found in learning to truly believe that, no matter how bad things look at this point in the history of our earthly nation, God wins in the end. Someday, and it may not be too far away, He will lower the curtain on human history. When He does all the evil that this world which we are in, but not of, now tells us is morally acceptable will be utterly destroyed…as will those who have been willingly taken in by that evil. But we are not to revel in this fact in the sense of looking forward to the judgment of the human race. The word tells us that our Lord takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. No, our job is to obey Him and love people in such a way as to be vessels of true salvation in their lives, even if it costs us everything. This is not only the best choice for the authentic believer, it is the only choice.

May God help us.

Promises, Promises
Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

God does not ever break His promises, but He does allow circumstances in the lives of His children that tempt us to think he does. We mistake experiences of loss and unfulfilled desire for evidence God is not trustworthy. However the promises we sometimes feel He has broken were not promises He ever made in the first place.

Some believers remain under the illusion that God has pledged that life here is meant to be free of significant and lasting pain. We somehow get the idea that the “trials and tribulations” the Bible talks about are for someone else; or if they really are to be a part of our experience they should be minor and short-lived. Both of these self-deceptions can come back to haunt us when we inevitably feel the full-force of the adversity that cannot be avoided if we live very long in this profoundly fallen world. If we hold on to them after that adversity enters our lives we are on a certain road to bitterness because we cannot accept the good that God may cause to come out of our pain if we persist in thinking we should be exempt from that pain.

Within the rubric of the “little or no pain” idea is any number of more specific “promises” that God has never made to Christians. He has not promised us material wealth, for instance, or that we will have a spouse. God also does not vow that we will be perfectly healthy physically throughout our time here or completely fulfilled in all our interpersonal relationships. We may have some of these things if they are part of His will for our lives, but His will and our will are not always the same. Those who try to interpret Scripture to defend the notion that these things are somehow the birthright of every truly faithful believer are not reading their “proof texts” in the context of other passages in the Bible that say something different. They are leaving out very explicit verses about the experience of pain and loss being the lot of all human beings in this life, including Christians.

Actually truly faithful and favored children of God are likely to experience more discomfort in their sojourn here on Earth, not less. If we are uncompromising witnesses of Christ in everyday life we will suffer the angry retribution of both Satan and those under his sway. The suffering of holy men is well documented in the Bible. Some, in fact lost, the very things some say God permanently promises us (like possessions and loved-ones) because of their commitment to the Lord…and many lost their physical lives

The real and precious promise that God has made to His children is that He will see them through their affliction, use that affliction to make them more Christlike, and eventually deliver them from all affliction in the World that is to come. We are often on theologically thin ice when we assume He has made promises unrelated to this core promise. We are on even thinner ice when we let unfulfilled expectations based on faulty assumptions sway us into thinking God is not worthy of our complete trust.

God absolutely keeps His promises. He does not, however, keep promises He never made to begin with.

Entitlement and Lost Blessings
Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

When we are filled with bitterness from a perception that we have been treated unfairly and have not received what we deserve from God it becomes impossible to fully accept whatever it is that He might truly want to give us. The harboring of resentment against God is an effective block to His blessing our lives in other ways.

On the surface the very idea that any of us has not received “what we deserve” from God is, to say the least, problematic. What rebellious, fallen human beings deserve, apart from the received grace of God in Christ, is destruction. But for Christians more often the feeling is connected with the idea that we have not been the recipient of what we think other believers have been. Beyond that we might have an idea that, as children of God, we are now entitled to attain on our terms the abundant life Jesus promised us.

What we would like on those terms might be any number of things: a mate or better health or more money or more obedient children. Whatever the desire the common denominator is that we want it our way and we want it now. This seems to be a particularly widespread problem among Western Christians. We live in a society that believes in the concept of entitlement. “You deserve the best” is the message behind every advertisement for the myriad material things available to us in the First World, and far too many of us who claim the name of Christ have unconsciously bought into this lie.

The hard truth of the matter, however, is that we are individually responsible to repent from the spirit of entitlement. If we do not the result will be bitterness towards a God Who we have duped ourselves into believing will not give us what we “need”. More accurately He will not give us what we want when we want it.

This is not to say that human beings do not have legitimate needs that God Himself has built into us. It is also sometimes difficult for us to determine the difference between a deeply-felt want and a need. It is amazing how much a certain want can feel like something we can no more do without than we could do without breathing (ask any lonely single Christian who has yet to find a mate). Beyond that what seems like a want might actually be a need but one that God, in His perfect timing, will meet in us at a later date than we would like.

Whatever the nature of the thing in question; it is easy, particularly after waiting for something for a long time and not receiving it, to be tempted towards bitterness at the One from Whom we know all blessings ultimately flow. The tragic thing is that if we harbor that bitterness for long we will close ourselves off to other blessings He may want to give us right now, blessings that might even assuage our sense of loss at not getting whatever the thing is we so want at the moment.

As in so many aspects of the Christian life the antidote for bitterness is a renewed sense of trust in a God who is not only all-giving, but all-wise. No one wants to give us the abundant life more than our Lord, but He knows far better than we the perfect time and the perfect way to give it to us. We must learn to truly believe this if we want to be at peace with our circumstances and have some measure of contentment in this life. As we are willing to believe the truth about the wisdom of His Lordship over both our wants and our needs we will find the strength to give up our frustrated bitterness and wait patiently for God to give us all good things.

Bitterness Kills
Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved

There is a certain cold logic to bitterness. Bitterness appeals most strongly to our sense of right and wrong, to our sense of fairness. Bitterness says that we have a permanent right to hate those who have hurt us or allowed us to be hurt by others. It is more interested in past losses than present and future gains. It forfeits hope and doesn’t care. When we are caught up in the self-indulgent throes of bitterness we would rather lash out at a loving God who would “restore the years the locust has eaten” than allow Him to restore those years to us.

Unrepentant bitterness is the biggest barrier to our healing. To be bitter is to, by definition, remain unhealed. We cannot heal from what that which we refuse to give up. Much of the cure of the soul is caught up in surrender, the surrender of what ails us to God. We cannot be healed of physical infection unless we are willing to let the doctor touch and cleanse the wound. Bitterness is a sort of spiritual infection. If we are not truly willing to let God put His hands on this angry, hateful contamination of our soul He cannot and will not heal us.

In fact the wound analogy can be taken a step further. Imagine having a cut and purposely rubbing dirt and filth into it. The result of such an action is to make the infection worse and potentially spread it throughout the body. Every time we choose to entertain bitterness we are making the infection stronger within us. This is the patent insanity of holding on to angry unforgiveness. How many of us nurse a grudge? Every time we do we are, in effect, sickening ourselves.

In fact this same spiritual illness will eventually spread even if we do not actively make it worse by dwelling on it. Ignoring an infected injury ultimately has the same effect as feeding it. Acting as if it isn’t there just draws out the period of time in which it does potentially irreparable damage to our lives. Bitter resentment is just as destructive when left to itself as it is when consciously indulged; it just takes longer to do the same damage. In the end bitterness simply cannot be allowed to be present in our lives at all if it is not to destroy us. It must go!

But it cannot go if we are not finally willing to let it go. The problem is we get something out of bitterness, a certain perverse satisfaction in clinging to our hurts. On some level those who remain bitter want to be bitter. Perhaps it is the stubborn tendency to want to judge others. We do not want to release them to the one true Judge so we hold onto what they have done to us and blame them for it in perpetuity. We would rather hate them than give in to a forgiveness that takes their punishment out of our hands. Such a state of heart only destroys us, but we do not care. We get some terrible false gratification from letting it define us. This is a particularly evil form of insanity.

The self-inflicted curse of bitterness spits in the face of both the healing and the Healer. It perpetuates wrong relationship with God, others and ourselves. It is idolatry because the “right” to be bitter is elevated above our absolute imperative to be obedient to God and forgive as He forgives. It is deeply wicked and incredibly destructive to our very souls.

Bitterness kills.