Month: August 2018

Copyright 2018 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

The story of the rich man and Lazarus in the Gospel of Luke has sometimes been used by those who decree the term “wealthy Christian” to be an oxymoron to justify their belief. But even if you categorically believe this to be the uniform teaching of the New Testament, and from a truly contextual approach I personally do not think that idea is tenable, this is definitely not the best passage to use to buttress it.

The reason is easy to understand if you know a bit about the life of Abraham as it is told in the book of Genesis. In Genesis we read the following:

“The Lord has greatly blessed my master, so that he has become rich; and he has given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and servants, and maids and camels and donkeys.” Genesis 24:35

These words were spoken by Abraham’s servant messenger during his journey to find an appropriate wife for his master’s son, Isaac (ultimately Rebekah). There are other references to the patriarch’s great wealth elsewhere in Genesis as well. Yet, at no point in the Bible is his status as one of the greatest “heroes of the Faith” somehow diminished by the mere fact of the material wealth he knew during his lifetime. Moreover, Jesus Himself obviously affirms this in here in Luke when He places Abraham in Heaven speaking with the less fortunate rich man who finds himself in Hell.

The reason the rich man is there has less to do with his wealth than about how he did or, in this case, didn’t use it. We find out earlier in verses 19-21 that:

¹⁹ “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. ²⁰ At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores ²¹ and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.”

In the next verse we find out that the rich man dies and ends up in “Hades.” Meanwhile the beggar Lazarus, when he dies, finds himself in “Abraham’s bosom”, an Old Testament term clearly used here by Jesus to refer to Heaven.

Why is the rich man in Hell? It is clear enough from the text that he never once lifted a finger to help a poor, sick man who daily laid by the gate to his opulent mansion. One of my study bibles declares that there was a “fatal deficiency in the life” of this man, and I think it is safe to say that this deficiency was his total lack of compassion for Lazarus, not the fact of his wealth. It seems to me that any number of far less affluent Israelites at the time could have shown the same lack of compassion as the rich man…and suffered exactly the same fate.

The dialogue between Abraham and the rich man is that of one once materially rich person to another. For this reason wealth, in and of itself, cannot be the determining factor for the very different places in which the two ended up. The determining factor was character.

Having wealth here on earth carries with it great responsibilities, of that there is no doubt. We see this borne out elsewhere in the counsel of the word of God. We also see that having such wealth can often (though not always) be a dangerous temptation. In fact loving wealth more than the God who allows it is more than a danger. Unless repented of it is a spiritual death sentence. It was, in fact, just that to the man in this parable. Being compassionate, at perhaps considerable cost, to the desperately needy man on his own doorstep apparently never crossed his mind, or his heart.

The reality of that neglect alone showed he loved money more than God because, like himself, Lazarus was a man made in that God’s image and his welfare was infinitely more important to God than anyone’s excessive material comfort. It should have also been far more important for the rich man in this parable. That it wasn’t explains his fate and should be taken as a warning not just to the rich, but to all who may similarly neglect compassion…including those who profess to be followers of Christ.

 

Copyright 2018 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

Luke 22:39-44 is one of the most provocative passages in the Gospels:

^“39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. ⁴⁰ On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” ⁴¹ He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ⁴² “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” ⁴³ An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. ⁴⁴ And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.^{”  –} New International Version (NIV)

This passage, along with its parallel verses in Matthew and Mark, reveal to us the only time in His recorded life when Jesus actually asked that something His Father willed for Him be something He might avoid. In all other things we only see the Son of God, and the Son of Man, working in apparently perfect unity with God the Father. It is here in the Garden of Gethsemane, and here alone, that the human side of our Lord reveals itself in the sense of the intense human desire to avoid agony, be it physical, mental or spiritual. Jesus knows that He will experience all three of those kinds of agony the next day in a way no human being in this earthly life ever had before, or ever will again, and as one fully human He asks His Father of there is any possible other way.

As we know, in the end, Christ decides to follow the way divinely marked out for Him, the way of the cross. Yet it is instructive and, potentially, supremely comforting to learn here that we have a Lord who knows what it is to experience almost overwhelming fear (of something truly worthy of it) and not only not be destroyed by that fear but overcome it.

Virtually all of us deal with anxiety at one time or another in life and some of us (the author included) have known anxiety to such a level, and for so long a time, as to have to seek a cure for the misery and paralysis it brings. Some of us know what it is to experience panic attacks born of this level of anxiety, moments when we thought we would be completely destroyed by its presence.

Anxiety is really just a synonym for fear. For whatever reason we prefer to talk about “anxiety disorders” in this day and age rather than chronic fear, but that is what the disorder really is: the state of being in deep, unyielding, and long-lasting fear. It is one of the most miserable states human beings can know. It also can have its effects multiplied by a sense of isolation, a feeling that no one else could possibly know how bad we feel. In fact that very sense of isolation reinforces the fear with which we may struggle.

This is where the “supremely comforting” part can be applied to our hearts from these verses. If the incarnate Son of God, who also is fully the Son of Man, can live through the near absolute darkness of that night in the Garden of Gethsemane, through submission to the recognized will of God, than so can we who are also children of that same God. We can also avoid adding shame to our sufferings, in the sense of feeling like we are the way we are purely because of cowardice or lack of character. If there were two things (among the many) that Jesus Christ did not in any way lack, they would be courage and character. Yet even the Perfect Man knew what it was to feel the depths of fear, want to avoid its source, and yet somehow persevere in doing the will of a perfect and loving God, even when it meant facing that fear’s unavoidable reality.

Jesus knew He was about to go through the worst experience any human being has ever known, then or now.  He knew that all too well, but by the grace of God and, perhaps more importantly, by the fact of His very identity He still did just that. The result was His resurrection, His and his Father’s glorification, and the fulfillment of His supreme mission: to make possible the salvation of the human race.

We who are followers of Christ have the very nature that allowed the One we follow to go through that night in the garden. We also have the ministering grace of His Father to help us in our own “dark nights of the soul.” Fear does not have to destroy us, no matter how much it may feel, in a moment or moments of time, that it will. Beyond that we will also find like our Savior that on the other side of our worst fears is the joy that will come from facing both them and their sources, and trusting God to act in true obedience to Him until both are just a distant memory.

Copyright by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

1 Timothy 5:17 in the RSV Bible tells us that God “richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy”. It would appear that He approves of pleasure. This makes perfect sense considering that it was He who designed us with the capacity to enjoy pleasure in the first place.

This sometimes seems to have been lost on certain self-appointed guardians of biblical morality. These are the people who will tell you things not specifically prohibited in the Scriptures ought to be.  Four examples might be the practices of smoking of any kind, drinking alcohol and dancing. Each of these activities is frowned upon by many conservative Christians. In fact the author attended a Christian College in the Eastern United States which prohibited all three activities. At the time I was a new believer coming out of a worldly lifestyle and thought the rules very appropriate for Christian higher education. It contrasted strongly with the secular Florida “party school” I had previously attended, and that was just fine with me.

In the 25 years since then my point of view has slowly changed, partially from beginning to learn the difference between legalism and grace, and partially from discerning the difference between license and Christian freedom. I make a conscious effort to no longer automatically judge a person’s spiritual depth based on whether they enjoy a glass of wine at dinner or the occasional cigar after it. Moreover If they then decide to dance the rest of the night away I will not assume they are the dreaded “Carnal Christians” (an oxymoron; or so we are told by fundamentalists) who some of us decide are sliding down “the slippery slope.”

It might surprise many Evangelicals to know that a man who is very highly esteemed among us as a model believer, the late Christian author and apologist C.S. Lewis, was a cigarette smoker.  Then too there is Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation. He was a man who had no compunction about drinking a little good German beer and, apparently, more than a little on some occasions. As for dancing we can look to the Bible itself and the person described there as “a man after God’s own heart”, namely King David. In 2^nd Samuel 6:16 he returns from a victorious battle “leaping and dancing before the Lord”.

Now this is not to say that any of these things are without spiritual or physical danger. While the Scripture does not mention anything about smoking specifically it definitely has much to say about taking care of our bodies, God’s temples on Earth (and Lewis, by the way, was not proud of his habit). Alcoholic beverages are not condemned by the Word of God but drinking to get drunk certainly is. As for dancing, Christians need to discern between the legitimate expression of the art form and the overtly sexual bumping and grinding set to music that is so common today.

These, though, are often questions of moderation and self-control, not prohibition. We serve a God whose “good pleasure” it is to give us the things of the Kingdom. Under Christ’s Lordship our minds, bodies and spirits are meant to fully enjoy the many good gifts He has given us while we sojourn in our temporal home on Earth. This is part of the abundant life that is the earthly inheritance of every believer, and no arbitrary man-made law should stand in the way of God’s children receiving that inheritance.