Baby Snatchers

There are those who snatch the orphan child from the breast, and take as a pledge the infant of the poor… From the city the dying groan, and the throat of the wounded cries for help; yet God pays no attention to their prayer. (Job 24.9,12)

Dedicated to the memory of hundreds of murdered children and those who loved them.

During Advent our pastor asked a question that has haunted me ever since. “Can we continue to idolize violence and still believe the Gospel’s message of love?” She paused to scan the congregation. With a catch in her throat that fueled the fire of her insistence, she said, “The answer just has to be, ‘No!’” By idolizing violence, she meant faith in hostility and death over love’s decisive power to sustain life. This violence runs much deeper than movie mayhem and gangsta rap. It drills down into the marrow of our social and spiritual beings.

We participate in a culture that places nearly all of its confidence in aggression and retaliation. It’s not enough to resolve our differences in a loving, peaceful manner—in part, because doing so requires tremendous effort and sacrifice on all sides. No, we opt for the inferior alternative: settling scores. This compulsion takes root long before we reach for physical weapons. It’s the product of low biology—what the New Testament calls “the flesh”—that obsesses about survival and perceives every life challenge as a potential threat. Darwin optimistically framed this instinct as “survival of the fittest.” But, at its core, it’s a kill-or-be-killed mentality that goads us to take preemptive strikes and meet violence with violence. Thus, violence is an attitudinal issue that, if unchecked, becomes a behavioral problem. Its primary weapons are hearts and minds; fists, guns, knives, and—most commonly—words are merely hardware.

Violence always carries hidden costs that ultimately discredit its effectiveness. Years may pass before the bill comes due. But the instant our hearts and minds turn to violence—whether physical, verbal, emotional, or spiritual—the invoice is in the mail and it will arrive bearing interest. And violence doesn’t care who pays the tab, as long as it’s paid. So when excess pride in our children causes us to instill in them a ferocious competitive streak, we shouldn’t be surprised when its attendant anxiety and selfishness erupt in rage. When paranoia about safety and loss of “what’s ours” compels us to attack others, we shouldn’t be perplexed when we become targets of hostility. When fear of losing respect breeds disrespect for others, we shouldn’t be shocked when what we’re determined to preserve evaporates. Faith in violence doesn’t just look ridiculous. It is ridiculous.

Because violence can’t coexist with love, it provides no brakes to stop our slide down the slippery slope. The gaps between “venting” and berating, “defending” and bullying, “winning” and humiliating are not as wide as we imagine. If we listened more closely to how we talk, we’d get this. We talk about “letting people have it” and “crushing the competition” and “butting heads.” Even when we’re on the losing side, we glorify the violence we suffer, saying we’re “floored” by what was said to us, or “blown away” by another’s actions. Kids and sports fans have a term for our use of violent speech—“talking smack,” which gets to the nub of the issue. Saying leads to doing, and with so much of our language devoted to violence how can we not admit to its prominence on the altars of our hearts?

Giving violence different names or redefining it to highlight its extremes won’t remove its place of idolatry. When violence becomes the thing we rely on for protection and the thing we most fear, it is our god. What else but a god could persuade us to wage war in the name of peace, to assert the sanctity of our land by invading and occupying another, to exhibit self-worth by diminishing the value and rights of others? These are not instinctive responses to fear and threat; they’re conscious acts that constitute wholehearted worship of violence. And don’t be deceived: this god is a filthy liar. Nothing it promises ever pans out.

In the 24^th chapter of Job—which some scholars believe is the Bible’s oldest volume—the hero’s complaint about the violence of his day reads like our daily news. Evildoers scam widows out of their property. Poor parents scavenge to feed their children, while thugs seize fields and vineyards. (Job’s loathing for this crowd is so vehement that he accuses them of not having enough sense to come in out of the rain.) Murderers kill the poor and defenseless. Women are routinely abused. And several times, Job’s focus turns to children born into a world consumed by violence. “There are those who snatch the orphan child from the breast, and take as a pledge the infant of the poor,” verse 9 says. These baby snatchers place no value in human life. Nor do they bow to the God of love. The violence they worship deadens their senses to the agonies they cause. “From the city the dying groan, and the throat of the wounded cries for help,” Job tells us. “Yet God pays no attention to their prayer.”

That last sentence troubles us, as it should. It certainly vexes Job. The entire chapter begs the question, “Why would God allow this?” It’s the same question we ask when reading reports of children gunned down in drive-by shootings and we’re gripped with grief by grade-school massacres. Where is God? The answer may be simpler, and closer to home, than we think. We’ve replaced the God of love with the god of violence. In Matthew 6.24, Jesus explains, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.” A society—including its religious right—that looks to violence to solve its problems has cast God from its presence. Before God can intervene, idolatry of violence has to be torn down. Then the love of God will return and that, in and of itself, will be the answer to our prayers.

Holy Week starts early for me this year, as Walt and I and members of our church join thousands of Chicagoans for tonight’s CROSSwalk, a sacred processional honoring the memory of over 800 young humans sacrificed to violence since 2008. Although the demonstration will be peaceful, it is intended to confront the idolatry of violence that plagues our city with baby snatchers, abusers, murderers, and war-makers. It is a fitting start to Lent’s closing act, when God’s love will challenge violence’s power and rise from death in decisive triumph.

This evening, as we hear the names of our lost called out—as we ponder the horrors of homicide and baby-snatching—we’ll want to ask, “Where is God?” But the answer to that won’t satisfy, because it’s the wrong question. With repentant hearts, we need to ask, “Can we continue to idolize violence and still believe the Gospel’s message of love?”

The answer just has to be, “No!”

Getting Out Alive

If my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me up. Teach me your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. (Psalm 27.10-11)

Under Siege

So it’s the Second Sunday of Lent and Oscar night, the one time during the year when my two greatest passions—faith and film—nod at each other in passing. (I should clarify: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn’t schedule its awards ceremony to coincide with Lent. Still, the two often overlap.) This year I’ve set a new personal best in seeing the nominated films. Other than two Foreign-Language nominees and four Documentary Shorts, I’ve seen everything. And what’s struck me about this year’s slate is the preponderance of movies about survival. It can be said that virtually all of the Best Picture nominees portray individuals dealing with traumatic events that threaten their wellbeing. Not all of them make it out alive. But this theme of facing horrendous odds is even more pronounced in the specialty categories.

• In addition to Beasts of the Southern Wild (my favorite film of 2012), the Live-Action Short Nominees Asad, Buzkashi Boys, Death of Shadow, and Curfew present young people whose lives are irrevocably shaped by trauma, as does War Witch (Foreign Language Film) and Inocente (Documentary Short Subject), which introduces us to a 15-year-old homeless girl whose only hope exists in her extraordinary artistic ability.
•  Literally all the Best Documentary nominees tell survival stories. Two (5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers) ponder the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. How to Survive a Plague recounts the genesis of ACT UP, the AIDS activist group that pressured the government and drug firms to develop effective treatments. The Invisible War paints a heartbreaking—and enraging—picture of veterans whose lives are forever scarred by rape while in the military. Searching for Sugar Man is the redemption tale of a 70s pop star presumed dead after his career tanked and he survived poverty as a day laborer in Detroit.
• Chasing Ice (Best Song) is a harrowing documentary that chronicles climate change’s visible impact on the planet’s survival.

The pulse that races through these films beats with the sense of being under siege. There are no easy answers in these movies. Forces beyond their characters’ control raise seemingly insurmountable barriers and we can gauge how we’re feeling about our predicaments by how few of them earn that old “ triumph of the human spirit" cliché. These pictures have been chosen for the industry’s highest honor because they speak to us in urgent, inescapable ways. And what they’re telling us is not overly optimistic.

Souls at Their Extremes

Perhaps the Oscars’ close proximity has filtered my response to this weekend’s texts. But it seems to me that they, too, present vivid portraits of endangered survival. The Old Testament (Genesis 15.1-18) recounts God’s covenant with Abraham, who’s lost all hope of fatherhood. In Psalm 27, David feels beset on all sides, yet he resists the pressure to give up by declaring, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (v1) In Philippians, Paul contrasts the waywardness of those who “live as enemies of the cross of Christ” with the assurance of believers, whose “citizenship is in heaven.” “Stand firm in the Lord in this way,” he says. Then the Gospel (Luke 13.31-35) gives us the poignant moment when Jesus predicts His imminent death and mourns that, had things gone another way, His story might have ended differently. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” He cries. “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

Everything in these texts feels in flux and uncertain. The voices we hear are weary and confused. There are deeply struck notes of trepidation, conflict, and loneliness. The cries come from souls at their extremes, hanging on to hope against all hope, belief in spite of all evidence that things are not working out favorably. Abraham is too old to have children. David is a warrior king in retreat. The fledgling congregation at Philippi is in danger of being overtaken by heretics. And Jesus is facing certain death because His own people won’t listen to Him. To a one, these people travel rocky roads. They’re struggling to survive. And the vivid emotions that enfold them require turning to the only help they know: a God Who is personally involved in their lives, Who is a Friend that sticks closer than any sibling, Who will go with them to the end. There is optimism in these stories, but you have to look for it, because the situations they describe are bleak.

God is With Us

Reading the texts—my head swimming with movie images of children, families, nations, and a planet at grave risk—the stubborn faith that David proclaims in Psalm 27.10-11 grabbed my heart and lifted it. “If my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me up,” he says. “Teach me Your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.” While conflicts and confusion that befall us may not achieve the epic scale of Scripture and movies, they nonetheless bring us to points of crisis when we feel our very survival is at risk. Loved ones come and go, often laying responsibility for their departure at our doors. Unforeseen circumstances threaten our inner sense of self, stability, and strength. Time keeps ticking, stacking up regrets and disappointments that erode our hope for the future. Opposing opinions and false ideologies rob our clarity of purpose. The feeling that no one listens to us creates profound grief.

If we are to survive, we have to know that God is with us. Those nearest to us may walk away, but the Lord will take us up. When we place our lives in God’s hands, we pray David’s prayer: “Teach me Your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path.” God alone is able to carry us over life’s rocky roads. Only God can help us stand firm in the midst of chaos. Only God can provide stability in the time of trouble. If we emulate David’s confidence in his Maker, we will discover the truth at the end of Psalm 27: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” Whatever we face, if we place our patience and trust in God, God will take us up. We will get out alive.

Surviving life’s traumas and terrors is the binding theme in this year’s Academy Awards. And we see a similar array of survivors in Sunday’s texts.

Certainty and Its Dangers

How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? (Proverbs 1.22)

Black-and-White

What makes certainty dangerous is that we seek—and find—it in all the wrong places. Wherever we encounter a patch of gray, our hard-wired survival instinct immediately compels us to transpose it into black-and-white. We formulate an opinion and block out any possibilities there might be another answer, or many answers, to help us decipher what we’re looking at. We crave certainty, because certainty makes complexity simple and simplicity aids decisiveness. And after we distill complex challenges and situations down to a chosen response, we underscore our certainty by claiming it’s “the right thing.” Put that way, craving the reliability and comfort of certainty sounds foolish. Laughing at other possibilities seems reckless and unwise. And in Proverbs 1.20-33 (Sunday’s Old Testament reading), we’re explicitly told such stratagems are indeed foolish, reckless, and unwise. 

In my own life, the tension between craving certainty and living with uncertainty has been most strongly felt in my faith. I come from a tradition that prides itself on iron-clad certainty based on a literal reading of sacred texts and a definitive theology that orders everything in life, from the workings of the cosmos down to minute moral dilemmas. When the need to find community among accepting, supportive believers drew me to the Reformed tradition, I experienced genuine culture shock. I’d never heard ministers and theologians confess they didn’t have all the answers. I wasn’t accustomed to people questioning the validity of Iron Age concepts and customs. Where I came from, one didn’t complicate matters by asking questions. You accepted everything the Bible says as written (based on your reading of it) and you called that “the truth”. Such an approach raises a really big question, however, and introduces an elephant to the room that one must choose to ignore.

When we rely on certainty that reduces everything to black-and-white, we remove faith from the equation entirely and settle for human religion. It’s taken me years to detect the inherent contradiction in professions like, “I know without a shadow of a doubt.” Removing doubt’s shadows—or refusing to acknowledge them—erases any need for faith’s light, a dangerous proposition by any measure, as it diminishes the Holy Spirit’s power to speak to us in new and relevant ways through God’s Word. We must be unwavering in what we believe, but we must never confuse faith for certainty. That’s when we find ourselves reflected in Proverbs 1.22: “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?”

A Cautionary Tale

Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 8.27-38) spins a cautionary tale about certainty’s pitfalls. Jesus and the disciples are in the region of Caesarea Philippi, a Roman outpost not far from Galilee. Everywhere they look they see temples and altars erected to pagan deities, and the sight of such religious diversity may be what prompts Jesus to raise a question out of the blue: “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples rattle off a list of names they’ve heard associated with Jesus: John the Baptist, Elijah, and other famous prophets. Then Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” All of them, save one, don’t know what to say. Only Peter replies, “You are the Messiah.” (v30) In Matthew’s version, his certainty is rewarded. Jesus ordains Peter as the founder of His Church. But we see something very different in Mark. There is no praise for Peter’s certainty. Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone about Him. And in short order, we see why this is.

Jesus explains what being the Messiah will entail—and it’s nothing like the picture Jewish teachers have conjured up based on literal reading of the Prophets. There is no divinely ordered coronation in Jesus’s version, no overthrow of oppressive regimes, no end to violence and political strife. In fact, what Jesus describes is the exact opposite of what the disciples expect. Verse 31 says, “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” This rocks Peter’s world. His black-and-white certainty is suddenly blanketed in shades of gray. He pulls Jesus aside and rebukes Him! Jesus turns and looks at His followers, as if to say, “Watch this,” and blasts Peter in return. “Get behind me, Satan!” He hisses. “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (v33) In a mere three verses, certainty downgrades Peter from a divinely inspired confessor of Christ to a foolish simpleton. He scoffs at the idea of Jesus’s death at the hands of the very people who, according to his understanding of Scripture, should hail Him as the Messiah. He rejects the knowledge Jesus lays before him, that death is not the end of the story. Christ’s power will be revealed in bodily resurrection—a concept so alien to Peter that he finds it intolerable.

Nothing’s as Simple as We’d Like

After this decidedly uncomfortable exchange, Jesus calls the crowd around Him and issues a startling edict: “If you want to become My followers, you must deny yourselves and take up your cross and follow Me.” The context is plain. Self-denial in pursuit of discipleship begins by letting certainty go and following Christ by faith. It’s simply not essential that we know the workings of our faith without a doubt. Indeed, from Peter’s example, we learn that certainty is faith’s enemy. It can only entertain possibilities that agree with its limited understanding. It wants to simplify everything so that every detail in life is predictable and clear-cut. And that’s not how God works in the world or our lives. Peter is right to proclaim Jesus as Christ. Where he goes wrong is to confuse faith for certainty, to embrace a set of human expectations of how things should be at the expense of trusting God’s supreme knowledge of how things are.

We can’t know everything for certain and we won’t. All we need to know is that nothing’s as simple as we’d like it to be. What seems laughably absurd to us is serious business to God. And, as Proverbs says, we hate knowing that, because it jettisons us into gray patches that resist black-and-white reasoning. Not having answers is the cross that we, as followers of Christ, must bear. But thanks be to God for all of life’s gray areas and the myriad questions we can’t definitively resolve. Without them, we’d have no need for faith and the wisdom to accept what we can’t possibly understand or explain.

Without questions and doubts, faith cannot exist. 

Drowning Our Sorrows

Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. (Ephesians 5.15-17)

Harder to Breathe

A neighbor called the other day, wondering if she could drop by. She was stressed out and needed to talk. After she sat down and I asked what was bothering her, her tears took her by surprise. “It’s not anything specific,” she told me. “I’m just so…“ she said, searching for emotions she couldn’t find. It was my third conversation of its kind this week, including a long one with myself earlier that morning. I’d picked up the paper, glanced at the sorrows splayed across its front page and set it aside. I turned on the TV. It was tuned to a “Project Runway” rerun and contestants were snapping at one another over hemlines. My email was chock-full of political fundraisers spewing hatred for their opponents. On the Web, people were at each other’s throats.

I considered a long walk along the lake, with my iPod shuffling through a “Nature Hymns” playlist I keep handy for times when the human world seems to have jumped its tracks. But that wasn’t going to work; rehearsals for Chicago’s upcoming Air and Water Show were underway. As fighter jets roared past our windows, I couldn’t escape realizing that this weekend thousands would flock to the lakefront for “family fun,” while the very same “show” would send Syrian and Afghani families scrambling for cover. For some reason, my mind strayed to Erin Brockovich, Gasland, and other films about people trapped in environments where a few sips of tap water served up a toxic cocktail. It felt as if something inside me—everything that longed to walk uprightly, optimistically—was folding in two. I was frightened and when I’m afraid, I cry. As I told our neighbor what I’d been through not long before she called, she nodded.  “That’s it,” she said. “This meanness in the air is making it harder and harder to breathe. You can’t say anything without somebody jumping down your throat.”

Evil Days

Sunday’s New Testament reading, Ephesians 5.15-20, speaks powerfully to those of us finding it harder and harder to breathe. If you’ve followed the weekly excerpts from the epistle, you know the writer is addressing a predominately Gentile congregation striving to overcome uncertainties about its role and function in the expanding Christian world. Paul (or a disciple writing in his name) first wants his readers to know that God is alive and present in their community. Of special concern is fragmentation within the local body, as it appears that Jewish converts are distancing themselves from their Gentile sisters and brothers, and Paul summons them to quell the divisiveness so that they may be united in Christ. “Grow up,” he writes (Ephesians 4.15)—not merely in the sense of acting maturely, but also in terms of nurturing godliness to withstand the vicissitudes of differing beliefs and opinions. Last weekend, we heard a set of guidelines to eradicate behaviors that undermine unity, culminating in one of Scripture’s finest admonishments for Christian living: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (5.1-2)

In this weekend’s text we read: “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” (v15-17) The days are evil. Now, as then, the writer urges us to be savvy about sociopolitical dynamics that make it harder to breathe. Power lust, greed, and excesses attendant to them have created a climate of hostility, violence, and hatred that can all too easily creep into the believer’s life. If we don’t take care—if we are not wise—evils that gain acceptance as social norms can choke the life-affirming traits of discipleship. Gradually we absorb a mentality that reflects a world without Christ, one that thrives on vitriol and selfishness and idolatry of status and wealth. We are no longer making the most of the time, steadfastly bearing the fruit of God’s kingdom on earth. We are participating in a culture hell-bent on smothering itself in impenetrable darkness. We are right, I believe, to weep because we live in evil days. But when we allow their toxicity to cloud our minds, we risk failure to make the most of the abundant life Christ imparts to us.

Time to Sing

It’s not easy to live in a society where rampantly apparent evils are either ignored or invisible to the majority—including many who boast of Christian faith but refuse to bow to its demands. For faithful and faithless alike, escape becomes the immediate impulse. We’re seeing this at every turn: in impoverished cities where street drugs offer retreat, in plush suburbs where mood-altering pharmaceuticals create a false blur of inner peace and happiness, in overcrowded bars and restaurants where alcohol flows freely with the seductive promise of good times. And beyond chemicals we ingest to get away from it all, we look to other forms of drunkenness and excess to put distance between our troubles and us. We overspend on mindless distractions, engage in meaningless pleasures, and invest needless overtime on careers and projects. We are a culture on the run, too wounded and self-absorbed to realize that our neglect of righteousness only fuels our discontent and descent into ruin.

“Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery,” Paul writes, “but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Creator at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (v18-20) Frankly, I don’t foresee things getting better any time soon. The corrosive issues and enormous problems we refuse to discuss in a mature, meaningful fashion won’t disappear in the hateful haze surrounding them. Yet Ephesians is adamant in telling us how to respond when we feel suffocated by evil. More than ever, we must be filled with the Spirit. It’s time to sing, drowning our sorrows with thanksgiving to God for all that Christ has given us: new life—resurrected life—that triumphs over evil and wins the day. Even when warplanes roar overhead and anger rears up at every corner, we must find the strength to reach for psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that revive the very breath of God present within us. It sounds foolish, but it is wise. “Understand what the will of the Lord is.”

When we feel suffocated by the evils around us, it’s time to sing.

Postscript: “This Is My Song”

I would be hard-pressed not to leave you with a hymn. This happens to be my all-time favorite—a song that consistently brings new life to me when I find it hard to breathe.

Like There's No Tomorrow

Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? (Matthew 16.25-26)

“If” and “Then”

Although some will shrug off Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 16.21-28) with typical nonchalance, it’s hard to conceive anyone who listens to it not feeling like they’ve been socked in the gut. It’s one of the passages where Jesus couldn’t be clearer, where He leaves zero wiggle room for alternate readings that soften the blow. Jesus challenges us to forget everything—every instinct, behavior, belief, and opinion—so we can discover what life is really about. He’s not just urging us to correct our attitudes and ways. He’s not just promising rewards if we heed His word. He’s not just upholding a divine ideal. No, Jesus is telling us we don’t get it. What’s more, we never got it. Since the start, we’ve been so obsessed with staying alive we never bothered finding out what life can be. We’ve redefined the unsurpassed gift God breathed into us as “not dying.”

By nature, our days are governed by “if” and “then.” Long logical chains tether us to the notion we can escape unfavorable eventualities. We accept that logic as hard and fast—sacrosanct, even—never considering our way may not be the only way, let alone the best way. Here’s a classic example. Our parents, teachers, and culture assure us if we study hard and do the work, then we’ll make good grades. If we make good grades, then we’ll get into good colleges. If we do well in college, then we’ll qualify for good jobs. If we do well in our professions, then we’ll prosper. If we prosper, then we’ll be physically and fiscally sound. If we’re sound, then we’ll lead long and healthy lives. And we believe this, even though we’re inundated with evidence that every link in this chain is unreliable.

What seems sensible and just today may prove ridiculous and unfair tomorrow. Nothing is certain, including the preposterous idea that strength and fitness guarantee survival. Health can be protected, but never promised. Relationships will founder. Fortunes evaporate. Bad things happen to good people. Evildoers frequently prosper and outlive those they exploit. Death comes when it comes; regardless when it occurs—even when it ends prolonged suffering—it’s always too soon. None of this is news to us and still we cling to the if-then chain’s fallacy that life is about surviving, doing all we can to delay the inevitable as long as possible. Meanwhile, Jesus says life is all about embracing the illogical—instead of fearing a future we can't foresee, He urges us to live like there’s no tomorrow. This principle hangs high above His teachings, starting in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6.34) But we don’t get it. And as long as we cede any room in our lives to fear, we won’t.

Human Things

Fear swirls around the Matthew 16 passage, with Peter serving as our touchstone for entering the scene. Not long before this, confessing Jesus is the Messiah turns Peter’s life upside-down. Jesus rewards his faith and perception, changing his name from Simon to Peter (“the Rock”) and ordaining him as Christianity’s founding prelate. It’s a daunting task, yet Peter reacts no differently than we might if the Messiah honored us with such a prestigious promotion: he gets a little full of himself and jumps the gun, taking charge before Jesus releases the reins.

After announcing His successor, Jesus attends to mapping the leadership transition so His followers know what to expect. He’ll go to Jerusalem, where He’ll be arrested, tortured, and executed after which He’ll be resurrected. Such morbid talk scares Peter. Not only isn’t he ready to watch Jesus suffer and die, he’s nowhere near ready to hold things together in Jesus’s absence. If-then logic seizes him with panic, causing him to pull Jesus aside and rebuke Him! “I won’t hear of it!” he says. In a tongue-lashing unlike any in the Gospels, Jesus puts Peter in his place—calling him by a new, altogether humiliating name and chastising his lack of faith and perception. “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus hisses. “You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (Matthew 16.23)

Of the many impressions flooding Jesus’s mind, the most troubling is His realization Peter and the disciples just don’t get it. They’re still focused on human things—longevity and survival, status symbols and future security, how it all ends versus all it can be. Jesus breaks down His life principle in if-then language that mirrors their thought processes. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves”—i.e., give up this nonsensical trust in human things—“and take up their cross and follow Me”—i.e., risk living His way, modeling His example, and focusing on divine things. (v24) After He sees restating His life principle in logical fashion gets the disciples no closer to internalizing it, Jesus puts it in terms any human can understand: losses and gains. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?” (v25-26)

Unequivocal Surrender

Jesus calls for unequivocal surrender—not only from Peter and the rest of the crew, but also from you and me. To know the joy, peace, and fullness that can only be found by living like there’s no tomorrow, we divorce ourselves from human things. We discover all that life can be when, for Christ’s sake, we forget all of our nonsense about “Me! Me! Me!” Answering Jesus’s invitation to follow Him means saying yes to His word, His will, and His way. Common sense is too common. Survival is too basic. Investing trust and capital in human things is too shallow. Staying alive is superfluous if we forfeit being alive in the process. And once we’ve squandered our lives trying to preserve them, nothing we achieve or possess will buy back what we’ve lost.

Jesus presents two choices: waste the precious gift of life on trying to stay alive or discover its riches by living like there’s no tomorrow. He makes it so obvious why His way is our best option. So why don’t we get it? Because it's also obvious we’d be out of our minds to do as He says. Precisely.

O Christ, we confess You are the Christ. We say yes to Your word, yes to Your will, and yes to Your way. If losing our minds is how we learn to live like there’s no tomorrow, then we surrender them to You. We’re through with fear and its spawn, futile selfishness and reliance on human things. We want to live! Amen.

Following Christ and finding all that life can be is one and the same thing, and it can’t be accomplished with anything less than unequivocal surrender.

Saving Lives

Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD. (Leviticus 18.5)

Altering Behavior

There’s no way we who lived through HIV/AIDS’ early years can adequately convey how helpless we felt. The virus emerged from nowhere, yet stayed under cover for nearly a year. Experts could only confirm formerly rare sightings of Kaposi’s sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia were surfacing in urban gay males with alarming frequency. Although everything pointed to deficient immunity, what triggered it wasn’t clear. Hearing it was unlike anything ever seen intensified anxiety as cases mounted. The longer it took to identify the cause of what was rapidly becoming a public health crisis the more it seemed like we’d entered a sci-fi nightmare, a real-life “Twilight Zone.” While most of the world watched from a presumably safe remove, panic overtook the gay community. We couldn’t combat our silent stalker until we knew exactly what it was, whence it came, its method of attack, and how it proliferated. Then the mystery grew more perplexing with outbreaks among Haitians, hemophiliacs, and IV drug users.

As researchers raced to find the deadly pathogen, public health officials rushed to solve the transmission puzzle. They had four distinct patient types and lots of dots connecting two or three, but never all of them. Even though the highest concentration of targets continued to be gay, the virus’s leap into predominately straight groups changed its name from GRID (gay-related immunodeficiency diseases) to AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). It also changed how AIDS was perceived. Its expanding range of victims raised fears we’d gravely underestimated it. We left “The Twilight Zone” to step into a looming apocalypse.

The four-year wait while investigators narrowed transmission down to bodily fluids left no time to wait for bureaucrats to craft and approve a cohesive public policy. The gay community launched its own campaign to disarm the virus and end its long night of grief. Driven by will to survive—fueled in large part by deep-seated anger at preachers and propagandists heralding AIDS as Heaven-sent justice—the community set a course that intuitively subscribed to biblical methodology for containing disease. Leaders and activists poured all their energy into altering behavior. Their unvarnished message was crystal-clear: practice safe sex or die. With the subtlety of a sledgehammer, they pounded two hallmarks of gay defiance—reckless sex and rampant promiscuity—into cultural taboos. And though it’s doubtful they caught the irony, their motive and message were identical to those in Leviticus’s infamous health and hygiene regulations.

But the irony gets sweeter. Leviticus 18, whose ban on same-gender sex (v22) is routinely misappropriated to condemn same-sex orientation, serves as the Bible’s safe-sex manual. As with other passages forbidding dietary and hygienic practices that germinate and spread infectious diseases among nomadic tribes, chapter 18 is not to be read as doctrinal edict. It’s a public health measure to alter behaviors endangering community survival. Yet, as AIDS prevention strategists recognized and Leviticus plainly acknowledges, when asked to choose between private pleasure and public safety, pleasure wins. Thus we note how strenuously the text marries unsafe sex with personal danger and converts previously acceptable acts into taboos. Like the AIDS safe-sex campaign, Leviticus 18 raises specters that won’t vanish when the lights go out.

What God’s Talking About

Pursuing a faithful (and faith-full) relationship with Scripture is a two-step process. First, we access God’s word through Scripture as the sacred medium by which God authoritatively speaks. Second, we hear God’s voice in Scripture. That’s why context is crucial. Scripture is a conversation, not a compendium of sound bites, loose facts, and freestanding ideas. To hear God accurately, we consider each verse, sentence, and phrase in light of the topic at hand. This is true for all Scripture, regardless of literary form (history, poetry, prophecy, gospel, or letter) or author, each of whom is divinely inspired to convey messages God wants us to hear. “Above all,” 2 Peter 1.20-21 says, “you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

As it was recorded so it must be read—without imposition of human will, following the Holy Spirit’s guidance, acknowledging Scripture is prophetic in that it not only speaks to its time, but also to all times. Therein lies the mystery of God’s Word, as well as the reason for our struggles to hear God correctly. Without being sure what God’s talking about, how can we be certain we hear what God is actually saying to us today? Freezing Scripture in time is a far different thing than freeing it from time in order to receive what God wants us to hear now. Insisting God’s message to the ancients is immune to human progress and social change is to denigrate Scripture as an antiquated response to primitive problems. In order to free the text from time and apply Scripture’s current relevance to our lives, it’s essential we listen closely to the whole conversation, identify the topic at hand—doing the historical and linguistic homework to understand the original situation and its nuances as best as we can—and then prayerfully allow the Holy Spirit to “carry us along.” (I love that!)

Preparing the People

So what is God talking about in Leviticus 18? Let’s listen attentively to how the conversation begins. Through Moses God tells the Israelites: “I am the LORD your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices.” This word comes to Israel when it’s neither far enough from Egypt to forget the dominant culture and customs it left nor close enough to Canaan to fathom what’s ahead. At present, Israel as a nation and society doesn’t exist. Once it reaches the Land of Promise and overthrows the Canaanites, its primary duty will be establishing legal and cultural guidelines that promote social stability and welfare. Like similar talks about dietary and hygiene policy, this conversation is all about preparing the people for statehood.

God says, “I am the LORD”—all-caps, i.e. the One True God, all-powerful and all-wise, Whose word cannot be questioned. The premise for everything that follows, then, is to instruct the Israelites to follow God’s direction in founding their nation. It must not borrow from the Egyptians, nor adapt to Canaan’s current environment. [As the conversation ends (v24-25), God states, “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” Note the national emphasis and allusions to disease: “defile” (tame in Hebrew: “to be or become unclean; to contaminate”): “drive out” (meshalleach; “to send away,” in this case, “to isolate or quarantine”); “vomit” (qo; “to regurgitate”).] Then, just before prohibiting a long list of imaginative—in most cases, seriously warped—sex practices, God reasserts supreme authority. “You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees,” God says. “I am the LORD your God. Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD.” (v4-5)

Rules for Living

What read like redundancies in English (“decrees” and “laws,” “obey” and “follow,” “obeys them” and “live by them”) are anything but redundant in the original Hebrew. Decrees (mishpat; “case, custom, decision, practice, etc.”) are verdicts rendered case-by-case to set or overturn precedent. Hence, God explicitly retains right to modify opinions, redefine terms, and reverse decisions as needed. Laws (choq; fixed patterns; ordinances) are statutes—constitutional edicts that undergird divine principles. Now things get really interesting, because Old Testament “obedience” comes in four flavors: to keep or protect; to listen closely and intelligently; to do or perform; and to consent or be willing. The first three are contractual, suggesting mutual agreement and honored trust. Only the last term approximates our concept of obedience as voluntary compliance to prescribed standards. Yet even that misses the term’s meaning. It employs a negative (“to refuse”) to indicate consensual action—a willingness to refrain, if you will. Leviticus 18 uses the three contractual verbs, but not the fourth, which would be the obvious choice if God were laying down commands. The chosen verbs leave no doubt Leviticus 18 provides rules for living that shouldn’t be misread as divine edicts. They’re verdicts, not statutes, and as such, are subject to modification, redefinition, and reversal at God’s discretion.

God invites Israel to agree to these guidelines. “The person who obeys [asah; does or performs] them will live by them.” While the phrase, “live by them” (va-chai) isn’t related to obedience at all, it flags the chapter. Va-chai (from the root chayay) means “saving life”! Given what God’s talking about and the topic at hand, both of which are plainly stated in English and even clearer in the original Hebrew, why we would dare suggest—let alone believe—Leviticus 18 is anything other than a roster of safe-sex practices to protect Israel’s public health, ensure its people’s longevity, and thereby preserve its stability as a nation?

The Original Audience

Since space is tight and the exercise isn’t especially instructive, we’ll skip enumerating the 17 sexual variations Leviticus 18 lists. Still, I advise anyone who’s been clobbered by Leviticus 18.22 (or concerned about those are) to review them here: Leviticus 18. When read in the correct context, a pattern emerges and an overall message comes to light. Interspersed through the guidelines we find several “shameful” phrases: “dishonor your father” (v8); “dishonor you” (v10); “dishonor your brother” (v18); “wickedness” (v17); “detestable” (v22); and “perversion” (v23). Both the list and the reproaches make a number of things patently clear. These activities are sufficiently prevalent in ancient culture to merit mention. Either their persistence or adoption will escalate the spread of infectious disease, wasting life instead of saving it. Since Leviticus 18 presents verdicts, not statutes, adhering to them is a personal choice, one unlikely to be made if the activities are acceptable. (One trembles to imagine living in an era where incest, child sacrifice, and bestiality are accepted; yet such were the times.) The reproaches convert health-endangering practices into cultural taboos. If God pronounces them dishonorable, wicked, detestable, and perverted, who would argue the verdict?

Hang on. Have we not just validated 18.22 as a trustworthy prohibition of same-sex orientation? It would seem so—until we check this reading against the context. Now that we know what God’s talking about, it’s equally important to establish whom God is speaking to. Who comprises the original audience? When we include the guideline against child sacrifice (v21), it’s apparent the chapter targets husbands and fathers, i.e., heterosexual men—with the understanding ancient cultures don’t categorize sexual behavior as straight or gay. Thus, the issue is traditional male responsibility for the community’s wellbeing. (Which is why men who knowingly put their community at risk are expunged from the populace per Leviticus 20’s death penalties.) To misappropriate 18.22 as a statute forbidding same-sex orientation, when it’s actually a verdict on same-gender sex, indicates one neither understands the enormous difference between identity and activity nor accounts for the text’s stated intention to save lives. The error of those who abuse this text to clobber homosexuals surpasses unlearned handling of Scripture. It represents flagrant disregard for Scripture’s statutory commands to love God and one another. Anyone so audacious and/or confused to break God’s Law in the name of righteousness and justice is in dire need of our compassion and prayers.

Leviticus 18 is a conversation between God and Israel in which God presents the community with safe-sex standards to promote its stability and wellbeing. Its prohibitions are not to be confused with divine edicts.