:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

Yesterday I wrote about those times when God leads us into wilderness periods in order to teach us to depend on him. When all of our sources of security and provision have been stripped from us, we realize that all we ever had was God himself all along.

Hopefully the lessons from the wilderness will stick with us.

However, walking through the wilderness is not a virtue in and of itself. God wants to shape our hearts and minds, fostering reliance on His Spirit. Make no mistake, this is something we can squander and screw up.

While in the wilderness the Israelites refused to trust God to provide, complained when he didn’t provide what they wanted, and worshipped an idol when God didn’t show up on their time table. There were serious consequences to this battle of the wills.

God does not back down when we resist the lessons he wants to teach us.

I can fight him, persist in sin, and complain that the wilderness isn’t what I deserve. However, God has his plans for me and for you, and these are good plans for our benefit. The process may not feel pleasant, but it can produce real fruit if we submit to his plans for us.

Resistance, selfishness, or sloth will not lead us out of the wilderness. Some days I feel like I’m slowly piecing together the lessons he wants me to learn, other days I gripe and complain, and then other days I have a refreshing glimpse of the blessings he wants to start unfolding in my life and in the lives of those around me.

Until God becomes our greatest desire, may every other source of comfort and security leave us frustrated, stuck, and confused. May nothing take the place of God in our hearts. May we learn that lesson sooner than later.

You could probably count on one hand the number of times I got into trouble as a child. I never went to the principal’s office. Nothing was more important than being the good kid who always finished his homework and obeyed his parents.

I classified the day that I forgot my homework a national disaster.

I suppose I imagined my teachers and parents meeting behind closed doors to have crisis meetings about me. They had pitchers of water and donut holes. “We always thought Eddie was a good kid, but he’s messed up. Clearly, we were wrong about him.”

I didn’t believe I could still be that good kid after failing at something… anything. I never thought that they would expect me to let them down or to make the wrong choice sometimes. I didn’t think that my parents or teachers would understand.

As you may suspect, that mindset has been gracefully carried over to God.

God sits at his desk in a kind of heavenly principal office, and I walk in to fess up. And boy, he lets me have it. “You stupid imbecile! How could you let me down like this AGAIN?” I sulk out of his office, begging and pleading for mercy, forgiveness, and help to never do it again.

I imagine that God is so distant from me by that point that I can’t imagine him helping me.

Reality Check

The Bible tells a somewhat monotonous story at times. God’s people receive a covenant/promise from God, they break it, God disciplines them, they repent, and God restores them. The book of Judges is repetitive enough to make the most stalwart student of scripture cry uncle.

I used to think the ancient Israelites were a bunch of ungrateful, unfaithful chumps who needed to get their act together. Lately, I’ve been identifying with them. I can relate to that constant shift from faithfulness, to selfishness and sin, and back to faithfulness.

It finally hit me that God gets it too.

I’m Not the Only One

It’s quite silly and prideful for me to think that my sins are earthshattering, catastrophic events. I imagine myself falling from grace, losing my place with God, and banging on the gates of heaven. Some days principal office God looks like my best option.

Without minimizing the seriousness of sin, sometimes we make more of our sins than warranted. God is with us for the long haul. He knows we will sometimes fail just like every other human being before us. He knows we’ll need to repent like everyone else and to work with him on our restoration. He knows he can help us leave sin behind if we’re willing to embrace him and his power for us.

I wonder if God just wants us to confess our sins and get over it. Move on. Stop lamenting the times we fall and just start running the race again.

I can’t imagine any meaningful relationship in which I’d want to drag out the reconciliation process longer than necessary. While it’s important to deal with problems, we are in relationship with others in order to enjoy one another and to experience life together.

That relationship is what God wanted with Israel, and that’s why he put up with their highs and lows. He wants the same thing with us. And to that end, I don’t think our sins are always as catastrophic as we think. He’s been there before, and he can work with us.

I surround myself. In search of comfort, identity, and esteem, I surround myself with possessions, clothing, and goals. Depending on what I acquire or accomplish, I derive an identity.

This isn’t all bad. We need food, shelter, and clothing, and we derive them from our surroundings to a certain degree. We need some kind of work, which can be done as an act of worship.

However, at a certain point I forget the words of Job, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.” These goals become larger than warranted.

That’s a jarring way of saying that one day our surroundings, which are important in their own way and serve a function, will one day be stripped away. It will just be us and God.

What will we have then?

The book of Isaiah recounts a particularly tumultuous time in the history of Israel and Judah: the rise of Assyria and its subsequent invasions of their lands. As cities, fields, and people were destroyed one by one, Isaiah reminded the people of the only untouchable element of their lives: their relationship with God.

Each day I open up my computer praying for good news from various editors and wracking my brain for fresh writing ideas that will dazzle a new group of them. I have a lot of goals that I’m straining to attain.

However, will I have anything left when all of this life is stripped away? Am I clothed in my relationship with God? Do I desire to live with him, to serve him, and to do his will today?

That is the sure path to surrounding ourselves with what matters most and endures to the end.

I’ll be boarding a plane in less than 12 hours in order to go to Pittsburgh. I need to pack, help clean up the house in case we have to show it this weekend, and tidy up two talks for this weekend, so please forgive me if I keep this short and don’t flesh all of the details out.

Driving to work this morning I heard part of Obama’s speech in Egypt. He said many noble things, tried to reconcile some differences, and generally walked a the fine line required by diplomacy that seeks to honor the interests of other nations, while remaining committed to the interests of your own land.

I get it. He doesn’t want anyone to bomb us, but he needs to get elected in four years. Such is the balancing act of every politician.

However, what I find deeply troubling is the double standard inherent to his approach to the Palestinians in this speech.

By comparing their plight to the civil rights struggles of African Americans and the South Africans, he tried to build a case for non-violent resistance. I can’t remember his exact words, but he made a point of saying that violence would not make things any better for them.

And then I thought about our surge in Afghanistan.

While we shoot up this country, gearing up for a lot more, we’re telling others to pursue the path of nonviolence. As if we really believe it could work…

I understand that Palestine/Israel and Afghanistan are different in many ways, however the rationale for violence can be the same. Both Palestinians and Americans claim to be attacked. Both claim the right to fight to protect themselves. It’s easy to sit back in our comfy homes, pontificating about nonviolence to these people who are penned up in refugee camps, staring at the barrels of guns.

I think Obama said some good things in Egypt. He certainly seems to be giving pragmatic diplomacy a go, which seems to be an improvement over preemptive war. However, I wonder how effective this speech will be at the end of the day. The hard truth is that our actions do not match our words.

Unless we’re willing to figure out ways to neutralize extremists without blowing them and the rest of the countryside up, we frankly have no business telling an oppressed people to pursue nonviolence. That shouldn’t be a tough one to figure out in my book.

I’m not anti-military, and I’m not 100% pacifist. However, I very much worry about the message we send to the rest of the world by pouring so many resources into military campaigns, laying aside half of our national budget for defense spending.

We have told the world that killing people doesn’t work unless we’re the ones pulling the trigger.