Anything that contradicts,
What if there is no God? What if there’s no one to right all the wrongs and make it up to those that were hounded and tormented from the cradle to the grave? Then there is no happy ending for the oppressed poor of all the ages; they lie down forever beside the Nazi commandants, the human parasites, the heartless rapists and plunderers, the respectable merchants of war and all the agony-bringers who died peacefully in old age, content to go to a permanent sleep and do it with a smile. Doesn’t the very thought of that burn you almost as badly as the sights and sounds of their wickedness? Do you wonder why people still want to read good literature and watch decent movies with happy endings? They want a happy ending not only for themselves but for the tormented of the world. Only a crusading atheist like Daniel Dennett or a sad little atheist like E.O Wilson would say an immediate and definitive “no” when they were asked if they would not want there to be a God like one who shows himself as Jesus. They feel no need of such a God, you see, and because they feel no need of one they don’t care about the profound need of the countless unmissed and un-mourned whose bones were ground to powder.
Can you believe it? People like these who’d love someone to rise up and transform or or any other hell-hole of the world into a place of warm righteousness, honourable prosperity and justice for all, tell us they wouldn’t want there to be a God who would transform the entire planet!
Well, we won’t apologize for longing for justice! We won’t apologize for wanting a happy ending for the unknown and forgotten tormented of the world. We won’t apologize for hoping that there is indeed a God, one who is at least as disturbed as we are by the cunning cruelty and heartless brutality and destructive greed that’s rampant in our world.
Maybe there isn’t such a one but we’ll be damned if we don’t wish there was one because no human worthy of the name can look around and not want someone to do something about it all.
And I’ll tell you something else we won’t apologize for—we won’t apologize for trusting Jesus Christ. Those of us who’ve been privileged to hear the gospel and meet him there (and God will know how to work with all those who never have heard the good news)—we know there’s nothing glib or nonsensical about his view of the world’s awful state. When this young Knight came rattling his lance against the shields of humanity’s enemies it was no mere production, however inspiring that might be. This young man’s coming was God personally entering into our bewildering world as humanity’s champion.
I haven’t the foggiest notion why God chose to wait so long to come in the first place and I haven’t an inkling as to why he has waited so long to return (yes, yes, I can say things and make guesses to keep from saying nothing) but because I don’t know the answers doesn’t mean there are none! But with his first coming we’re invited to believe God and assess the meaning, significance and outcome of the world in light of Jesus. It’s certainly possible to judge the meaning of existence (or lack of it) in light of tsunamis or wars or pancreatic cancers or , a parasite-ridden child or in light of a Hitler or a Stalin—these are all real and Jesus knew about such things and such people. We look at them and then look at him; we know these things say something vast and sombre but he knows that too and still says, “Trust in God, trust also in me” (John 14:1).
But when he calls us to trust God it implies that God’s purpose is to bring it all out right in the end, to his glory and humanity’s boundless happiness. The plain message is that in the man Jesus—the man God is being—something is accomplished for the human family. His personal victory over sin and death is not his alone, it’s ours as well.
Not to connect Jesus’ life with the rescue of a world is to entirely misread the scriptures. The NT never encourages us to congratulate Jesus as if we’re pleased for him that he at least made it. No, it constantly calls us to praise and thank him and to join him in his grand enterprise for God and the world. And why would we praise and thank him if his entire career was centered on himself and had no outward look? You can make no sense of the coming, the life, death, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus unless it has in it what he insisted it has—the deliverance of a world and that’s why he says to all who hear his voice, “Trust me!”
In the end I’m certain that John Mark Hicks’ gut feeling is right—it isn’t a rational theodicy we need, it’s a proclamation! We need a proclamation that enables us to believe that God is indeed as we see him in Jesus and that in some real way the victory of Jesus is the victory of the human family. We’re happy for Jesus, don’t you understand, that things worked out right for him, that he was vindicated, that the humiliation finally ended and that in the resurrection he got what he most fully deserved. But if his vindication is nothing more than his personal experience, if it has nothing to say about any of the rest of us then after a while we lose interest in the story of Jesus and maybe even begin to resent his success and the praise he gets for seeing it through. Of course we’d tell ourselves that Jesus deserved his exaltation because his marvelous life was a challenge to God—“match that!” But our lives; what do we deserve? Yes, that would silence most of us, but still we have to go back again to those who from the cradle to the grave get nothing but abuse and deprivation. Are we to say they deserve no better? Would it be like Jesus to say of these millions that they’re getting all they have a right to expect from vicious landlords, war lords, gangs, pillaging militia, the predatory wealthy, corrupt government, drugs and booze barons?
Our deep and pervasive ignorance of even the simplest and most familiar things in life doesn’t obliterate the truth that’s wrapped up in them and our ignorance about how God is working to fulfill the best hopes of humanity doesn’t wipe out the truth that he’s doing it. And then there’s that look of Jesus who signed his commitment to us all in his own blood—our ignorance can’t deny the reality of that or his resurrection that says, “You didn’t think I came here to fail, did you?”
Donovan Tarrant gave wise counsel to his young son Ralph who had heard some really bad teaching about the nature and character of God. He told him: “Don’t believe anything that contradicts: “Our Father”. The advice is good when speaking about savage doctrine that violates the notion that God is the “Father” of all of us (Acts 17:26-29) but it works equally well when we look with steady eyes at the harsh realities of life in this world. Pancreatic cancer, wars, global credit crunches, generated by the greedy and irresponsible, that press millions of people on the lower rungs of the social and financial ladder, the loss of a devoted parent or child, the awful sense of abandonment that afflicts millions for many reasons—they all make claims that frighten us at times and they frighten us because they seem so persuasive. At times and under trials like these we hear the voice of Jesus saying: When you pray say, Our Father. When life’s experiences come saying all sorts of things, let them have their say but don’t believe anything that contradicts: Our Father.
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