telling it like it is (not like people want it to be)

Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said,

‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword,
and Israel must go into exile
away from his land.’ ”

And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there, but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”

Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I am no prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I am a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’

“Now therefore hear the word of the LORD.
You say, ‘Do not prophesy against Israel,
and do not preach against the house of Isaac.’
Therefore thus says the LORD:
Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city,
and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,
and your land shall be parceled out by line;
you yourself shall die in an unclean land,
and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.”

Amos 7:10-17; NRSVue

If I can say I have a favorite prophet, Amos might be it, or high on the list. His humility, honesty, and not flinching from speaking God’s word is so much needed at every time, certainly today. Not the babbling of the many false prophets who are speaking what “the king,” what those in power, even what the people might want to hear. No. But telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Amos says the most difficult things. We do no one any favor by sugar coating what needs to be said, so that the hard truth is possibly lost. No. We need to say it plainly, clearly like Amos. Only when the truth of God’s needed judgment is absorbed and accepted can the truth of God’s forgiveness and restoration come forth and be received.

being honest

One who gives an honest answer
gives a kiss on the lips.

Proverbs 24:26; NRSVue

If there’s something pretty clearly devil-like, it would be deceit. I have often thought that I would never be a good salesperson. I am too honest, and don’t care for what often seems to me to be the psychological ploy that comes with trying to sell a product. It often is a good product, and the company knows that their chances of selling it are higher with such practices. I would rather present it straightforward as is, and let the buyer decide in their own time after they have considered other options. But that would not fly well in the high-sales pressure world in which we live. Imagine a salesperson getting 40% of people to agree to buy on the day of their presentation compared to another getting maybe only 15% or less. The first might get a promotion, and the latter might get pressure and by and by be let go.

In the context, if that means anything for this passage, the proverb might concern honesty in the face of injustice (click above link). It might be much easier to let what is wrong go. We see that today in the political world. Similar to high pressure sales, there is a story being told, oftentimes frankly out and out lies. More often in American political history, statements that don’t tell the entire story, can be misleading, and can stretch the truth past the breaking point. That is common in history. Today bald-faced lies, “alternative facts.” This kind of dishonesty is quite common in various places in the world and in history, and it seems to be more and more the means of persuasion in the present.

The proverb likens honesty to love. If we love someone, or we love people, we’ll want to be honest. We won’t want to hoodwink them into making a decision when they’re not ready to. Neither will we want to control them through flattery or whatever other tactic we might use for our own benefit, not theirs.

To be honest doesn’t mean we tell them everything on our mind, like in the film, “Liar, Liar.” We give them a full, complete answer. Notice too, it’s an answer. We answer their inquiry as best we can, and as a rule keep silent otherwise. Honesty according to this proverb involves looking out for the best interest of others, not for our own selfish gain.

More wisdom in the Book for us, for life.

faith because of Christ, overcomes/conquers all (“the world”)

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

1 John 5:1-5; NRSVue

1 John along with the entire Bible is a great case study in the story that unfolds and is completed in Christ of the victory of God in Christ over all the forces of evil, night (figuratively speaking) and death/Death.

I realize that on some of my posts the Scripture passage quoted at the start is long and likely to be scanned or skipped over by any reader. It is always good to discipline oneself to read it all (I plead guilty to not always doing that myself). In this post, the point made is especially germane to the words of the passage quoted above, and in this case it isn’t long.

What we find is that Christ has overcome and gained the victory (see NET footnotes on 5:4 included in the link above). This victory in 1 John was over the false teachers who watered down Christ’s coming as something other and less than what it was. The conquest has been completed both by Christ’s incarnation and death, death shorthand here for Christ’s death and resurrection, which ultimately includes his ascension with the promise of his return.

What is it in our lives as believers in Christ which puts us under, overcomes us, so to speak? Whatever that is, and there are myriads of answers depending on each person and the circumstances faced along with other factors, but whatever that is has already been overcome in and through Christ. That is key. But what is also key is our faith laying hold of that. Unless by faith we lay hold of that, we won’t experience it, and will remain submerged under “the world” so to speak, the world representing all that is in human opposition to God and God’s good will and reign on earth “as it is in heaven.”

Obeying God’s commandments is linked to this faith that overcomes. Without that faith, we can’t, but with it, we can and will believe and love as God has called us to, and reject or disregard all that is contrary to that.

We have to live in this light. By faith we conquer not in the sense of doing so ourselves, but of entering into the victory of God in Christ. Taking the text literally, we do so together and I think that’s where it starts. But it plays out in individual victory available to us all, yes over whatever plagues and ills us in this life. Something that is once for all done on Christ’s part, but not once for all done on our part. We have to keep laying hold of that victory day after day in the faith which overcomes the world.

genuine love

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7; NRSVue

I like the song and the band, “All You Need is Love”, the Beatles. And surely there’s some measure of good from creation in the love to which they’re referring to. I also think Christians too often downplay the love people of other traditions have toward each other, as if it somehow doesn’t measure up. Paul puts our feet in the fire, because he’s talking to Christians, to the Corinthian church, and by extension to all of us who name the name of Christ. “The love chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13 makes it plain that if all is not inspired and driven by love, it’s worthless. But what marks this love? What does genuine love look like?

In what’s quoted from 1 Corinthians 13 above, we see genuine love described. The marks of it are what we find in the list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (verses 22-23). That’s in a communal context, and indeed that’s where love is played out. It’s good to love in theory, but “where the rubber meets the road,” in practice, is where it actually counts. 

Love is characterized by a commitment to goodness both as the end and the means. If it’s not good either way, then it’s not love. The end never justifies the means. If I imagine I can bring someone into what is good by what in actuality is not good, I err. At the same time, if I imagine I can do good things apart from goodness itself, I completely miss the mark. True goodness is love, or we could say goodness is a fruit of love. Love in the heart will be evident in our lives both in the good we do as well as the bad we don’t do. Again, as Paul puts it here, this time from the Common English Bible, love “is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth. Love puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things.”

Embodied perfectly, love is Jesus and Jesus is love. We turn to the gospel accounts: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to begin to see and understand that. All that follows and all that we are individually and more basically as Christ’s body in the world are to be marked with a growing awareness and practice of that. I am not myself apart from others, especially of Christ’s body in the world, and Christ’s body is itself through Christ. So this is a Christ-centered love, a love that is thoroughly human in the way that God intended in creation and is now restoring in new creation. Jesus came not to make us better religious people, or Christians, though if any of that can help, all well and good. Jesus came to make us better human beings. And the love Paul talks about here is central, at the heart of that.

justice and mercy

He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8; NRSVue

For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.

James 2:13; NRSVue

The words translated “kindness” in the Micah passage, NRSVue.

The Hebrew word חֶסֶד (khesed) is complex, sometimes translated “lovingkindness,” faithfulness,” or “loyal love.” It has also been understood as covenant loyalty.

NET footnote

Although the circumstances in the background of the two passages are different, the basic idea is the same: injustice or not doing what is right and good, and even by omission committing wrongs, as well as actual wrongdoings which are at the forefront of things.

I don’t consider “kindness” a bad translation in the NRSVue, as long as we remember that kindness is not actually merely niceness in mannerisms without any acts behind it. A graphic example of a kindness which ends up being kind in the way that can be (mis)understood today is expressing concern over bombings which kill children and women and others, while doing nothing about it. Good acts can begin with words, but words aren’t enough. Here’s a definition of kindness:

the quality of being friendly, generous and considerate… a kind act

Data from Oxford Languages

That doesn’t capture all that would be good in “kindness,” and again, we have to refer to the word in the original Hebrew as noted above. It is descriptive of God’s all pervasive, never ceasing love, a love which may at times seem hard, but is nevertheless love through and through. An effort to meet actual needs would have to be included to fulfill the true meaning of the word, at least of the Hebrew word it’s a translation of.

What is not needed nor should be desired is no accountability for truth or what is good and right. And I think based on the James passage, there should be an accent on mercy. Ultimately mercy triumphs over judgment. Given all that is so wrong in the world, and even wrong that is supported by God’s people, one is hard pressed not only to give in to despair, but to just be out and out angry and to not let go of such anger. And that’s more than understandable.

Anger is an inevitable part of being a responsible moral agent. Love is not love if not angry when love is violated. I tend to want to accentuate sadness rather than anger, but anger underlies or is on the edge of such sadness. James warns against anger, but it doesn’t forbid anger. We’re to be slow to become angry, also remembering that anger itself does not produce what is just, right and good. We can be moved by anger, but it’s an anger which we as humans can’t bear long without harm done.

Love is to prevail, an all-encompassing love: for the victims, but for the perpetrators as well. It’s certainly not a love worth being called love if the perpetrators are not held accountable. There needs to be justice always tempered with mercy. Mercy is not worth the name if justice is absent, and justice is not biblical if mercy is absent. One has to address what is wrong. Then and only then can mercy triumph over justice. Salvation means nothing at all if wrongs are brushed under the rug. Or maybe we should remove the story of Zacchaeus from the Bible (Luke 19:1-10).

At any rate, given all the madness going on in the world, we do well to hold on to both: justice and kindness/mercy/love. Remembering that we ourselves are in need of such. But taking full responsibility to be accountable for ourselves and to play our part with others in responsibly speaking out and doing what we can for what is right, good and just on the basis of love in this world.

catch the fire

“I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:

father against son
and son against father,
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

Luke 12:49-53; NRSVue

Yes, we all ought to be holding hands, the entire human race, and sing Kumbaya. But the fact of the matter is in spite of the wonderful tapestry of the various peoples and cultures, we’re much divided, even into warring factions.

A false vision of Jesus has him coming and helping everyone simply to overlook differences and get along, but Jesus doesn’t go there. And arguably, Jesus seems to make the point in the gospels that things must get worse before they get better.

Jesus brings the real issues that matter in the light of love for one’s neighbor, front and center. You either follow him into the new world that God is ushering in, or you refuse, living in the old world: makeshift, in direct opposition to God’s love which is completely steeped in truth, reality, righteousness and justice. There’s nothing in between. We either follow Christ or we don’t.

And then as we do as part of the baptized community in Jesus, we catch the fire which in God’s grace is purifying us, getting rid of all that is contrary to the good reign in Jesus. That is what we live for and if need be, die for.

Yes, to those who submit to this fire, it is purifying. But to those who don’t, it brings a judgment that indeed separates.

reality is reality (whether religion, science, or anything else)

Great are the works of the LORD,
studied by all who delight in them.

Psalm 111:2; NRSVue

Truth has always been contested with the echo of Pilate’s words to Jesus: “What is truth?” And today even facts such as what happened and who said what are regularly contested with “alternative facts.” There has never been a greater needed for thorough and objective journalism minus the opinion of the journalist. Of course, everyone has a bias in how news is told, but everyone should try to present a full and fair picture and ask questions on every side to hold everyone accountable, not much different from a jury of law to determine as is the case here, what’s beyond reasonable doubt.

Whether you’re talking about the faith of Christianity, “mainstream science,” history, or anything else, what is real is real completely apart from one’s opinion on it. It doesn’t really matter what you or I think about anything. What we think might become “our truth” by which we conduct our lives, not unlike Pilate of old. But that doesn’t mean it approximates truth or the truth or reality that much if at all. I may think science has it wrong on any number of things, and as I heard someone recently say, one could make a thorough argument that the moon is made of green cheese and surely convince some. But that doesn’t mean it’s made of green cheese. One can deny the existence of God, but even if you can’t prove philosophically that God does or does not exist, reality is reality. We in the faith find compelling reasons in our experience and in other ways that God does exist.

Conspiracies abound today, and while the United States has always seemed prone to have a good number of people who accept such, it seems more and more endemic, especially among some religious folks. Involved in this is a way of misunderstanding Scripture which brings with it an apocalyptic mindset, often with the refrain something like, “The signs of Jesus’s return are more present than ever.” It seems to me that for too many, conspiracies are the way of understanding most everything. And I suspect that propensity will never end. It’s not like no conspiracy ever existed, and sometimes there is some truth within a false narrative, but what happens is that the cry of “fire, fire” or “wolf, wolf” when there is no fire or wolf present can actually set us up for disaster on the occasions when there really is something unfolding before our eyes that we need to see. Such is actually happening today in a silently complicit or active Evangelically supported push against liberal democracy toward a Christian nationalism enacted by force. People need to become aware of that actual conspiracy so as to stand against it in a democratic, nonviolent way.

Reality includes not only facts but also understanding. What might be behind such thoughts or beliefs? Does that make them suspect? For example, Hitler championed the idea that the pure German “race” was Aryan and superior to all others, and that Jews should be exterminated. He alleged that such was based on facts. For any human being or group, that ought to be seen through for what it was and is, a blatant lie and not reality, but a nightmare. But even Christians in that day, including some Mennonites in Germany including German Mennonite pastors lined up with Hitler and even served as leaders in the military unit of Nazi Germany. That did come to a crashing, devastating end. But we see something of that same mindset rearing its head in many places including the United States.

Reality is reality. God is God. God is in control in the sense that God is indeed sovereign over the nations and over all things. God will judge and is judging. We often say, “Oh, how long Lord?” Too much doesn’t make sense to us. But whether we can grasp it or not, there is something for us to hold on to. Reality ultimately grounded in God through Christ. And humanity held accountable for all that is done on earth. We can bank on that.

live in the truth

You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

James 1:19-21; NRSVue

The book of James is kind of like my north star, what I return to again and again to hopefully keep me centered and on track. And with a friend’s reminder of the thought of being slow to speak and quick to listen, I return to that passage found in James.

It’s a whole package. We can only live out what we live in. The implanted word that has the power to save our souls. And note that while we partake of this as individuals, it’s addressed to community. In other words this is not only an individual endeavor, but a community one, as well.

It’s that simple. No more complicated than that.

back to basics: (part two: mind fill)

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 

Philippians 4:8; NRSVue

What are we filling our minds with? That’s always a good question, and never more important than today. We have at our fingertips a wealth of information and misinformation, if you can call the latter wealth. I think it is important to keep up with the news and try to understand the times, even if that’s most challenging now. In the effort to do so, we might be taking in some measure of what Paul meant in “whatever is true.” Though much more is meant in that one term than just trying to understand the present day.

I don’t think Paul is saying that we must slavishly make sure that not a drop of what is other than on this list or not in harmony with it should ever cross our minds. If that were the case, we would have to leave the world. It’s often the case that there’s a fly in the ointment, that there’s something less than desirable in what otherwise at least has lots of good. Yes, we need to guard ourselves, and not think for a moment that we don’t carry serious responsibility here both for ourselves and others. But I think the directive here encourages us to appreciate what is good wherever we find it.

This will require effort even as is implied in Paul’s words. But it also means simply taking in from nature and culture all the good related to God’s creation and gifts. Both.

Something I think is especially important for us now, but true in every age.

the Bible versus our systematic theology

The sum of your word is truth,
and every one of your righteous ordinances endures forever.

Psalm 119:160; NRSVue

Systematic theology is not a bad thing in itself. Some great works help us, for example the writings of Barth. I wish I was steeped in them, but many of us have been influenced by them indirectly. The attempt to formulate a system of theology which makes sense of the whole of Scripture and of life is fine, and maybe almost inevitable. It’s good as long as we put a humble asterisk by it to let everyone know that in and of itself, it is not the truth. Only God’s word is truth.

God’s Word can mean Scripture, the gospel, the message God gives us to be understood primarily through the community of the gathered ones in Christ, the church. Scripture is meant to be seen in its every part within the whole. If you do that, you’ll find that there are serious differences within Scripture itself. And we need to be slow in thinking we have the handle on anything. At the same time basic things such as faith in God, allegiance to Christ and the good news in him are things which we need to lay hold of and be committed to.

But we need to be wary, even to beware of any scheme of teaching which purports to be the teaching, the truth from God. And there’s plenty of that out there, some much better than others, but all of it not only suspect but mistaken if it is made to be the truth, the word of God, or the correct understanding of that word.

It’s like enjoying and studying a forest. Each tree and every part of the forest is important. But we need to see it as a whole, all of it in its entirety. Its messiness, not straight rows, and all manner of things which would not be let go if it was in someone’s yard.

Again, this is not at all to discourage either the formulation, reading, or consideration of systematic theologies. Systematic theology is not a bad thing in itself. But only God’s word or God’s Word is truth. And while God’s truth is the writings of sacred scripture and what comes through those writings, it is not something we can ever possibly get a full handle on. But God directs and helps us through that word.