"You're Killing Her!"

I had an interesting dream (aren't most dreams interesting?) recently.

Do you remember the battle of wits in The Princess Bride? My dream wasn't about that scene, but it referenced one line from it. This is that scene:

Vizzini: So it is down to you, and it is down to me. If you wish her dead, by all means, keep moving forward.
Dread Pirate Roberts: Let me explain...
Vizzini: There's nothing to explain. You're trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen.
Dread Pirate Roberts: Perhaps an arrangement can be reached?
Vizzini: There will be no arrangement, and you're killing her.

That's the line: Vizzini, holding the knife to the princess's throat, declares to the man who loves her, "You're killing her."

"You're killing her!" The villain blames the hero for the villain's own actions. That's a memorable scene in what is arguably the best movie ever made, but that scenario plays itself out over and over in the real world: the person doing good is blamed by the evildoers for the evil that he himself is doing. (I wonder if that ever happens in politics?)

God used that scene in a dream. It seemed that Father was calling out that lying spirit.  I was thankful.

And that's when Father spoke into the dream, and his mighty voice declared two things.

1.  A number of his kids have been falsely accused of what the devil has been doing. The accusations are lies. That's not who you are and you haven't done those things, the enemy has done them. Don't believe the lie.

2.  The enemy has had other lies, other lying spirits, deployed to protect the lie. Those are being disempowered and terminated as well. Some of them were very powerful, some very skilled with weaponry (I think of giants and swordsmen, of course.)

I believe that the lie that "You're killing her" is being exposed as a lie: those who are accusing others, more specifically, those who are accusing you, of doing evil will be exposed as liars, and they themselves will face consequences for that.

It's worth mentioning that if you've actually done the evil thing and it's just being exposed, then you don't qualify for this promise. There's a lot of real evil, even among the church, and much of it is being exposed these days, and God is not offering to keep sin hidden.

In addition, I believe that Father is revealing, and disempowering, other spirits who have been assigned against you to protect the lie that the accuser is making against you. He has made plans that would cover his lie, and if it were found out (as it is now), to cover his escape, but Father has already dealt with those lies as well.

So the exhortation is for us to pay attention. Specifically, we are called to stop paying our attention to the accusations against us, to let go of the fear that they are spewing at us, and to fix our eyes on the One who has already defeated them, who is now marching them off to captivity.

Look to your deliverer. Look to your King.

Principles for Understanding Some of the Ways of God.

1. God doesn’t show you all his cards all the time.

• Consider Job. Hell smacked Job around really hard, and Job complained that God had done it. God takes his time answering Job, but when he does, he never says, “That wasn’t me, that was ol’ stink-butt.” Rather, God took the blame, and basically told his boy that “This requires more understanding than what you have at the moment.”

2. God lets his kids write his story. His kids are people. They don’t always get all the details right.

• Consider David’s impetus for numbering Israel: who was it? Compare these versions of the story:
○ Again the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, "Go, number Israel and Judah." [2 Samuel 24:1]
○ Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel. [1 Chronicles 21:1]

3. God works within the expectations his kids have. He doesn’t change everything all at once.

• [God] also said to him, "I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it." But Abram said, "Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?" So the LORD said to him, "Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon." Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. [Genesis 15:7-10]

God did not tell Abe to cut the animals in half for the covenant. That was just what Abe was used to. God went along with it, since it didn’t break anything.

• Consider Genesis 22, when God tests Abraham. Abe came from a culture where the gods demanded human sacrifices, so God starts the conversation in those terms [22:2]. But then he interrupts the process in order to show his boy that He doesn’t do things that way. [22:11-13].

4. Everything really does point to Jesus.

• Consider “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” [Luke 24:27]

• “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” [Hebrews 1:1-3]

• “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!” [John 5:39].

5. The people of God don’t always interpret God right.

• The Pharisees of Jesus’ day should be enough proof of this point all by themselves. [See the gospels.]

• Job’s friends sure don’t get God right either. “After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: "My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” [Job 42:7]

6. The Bible is not a textbook about right and wrong. It’s not how to know God [John 5:39]. The Bible is the story of God’s relationship with his people, and his efforts to build relationship with them.

7. The things that you experience from God are not always about you. Sometimes, they’re lessons for someone else.

• God was teaching the Egyptians a lesson, too during the Exodus: “And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD.” [Exodus 14:4]

• Sometimes he’s showing us off to ol’ stink butt, or to the hosts of heaven.

8. Understanding God is ultimately well beyond our capabilities. We know what he shows us, and no more, though we might have theories and guesses that may or may not be distractions.

9. Progressive Revelation is a real thing. As time goes on, God reveals more and more of himself.

Job & Abraham didn’t understand much about God. David had much more revelation. And He has revealed so much more of Himself in Jesus.

Bottom line: We in the New Covenant have a much better understanding of some of the ways of God than did people before us.

Correlation Does Not Imply Causation

I was working my way through the Book of Acts recently, and Philip really caught my attention. Philip is awesome!

Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them. And the multitudes with one accord heeded the things spoken by Philip, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, came out of many who were possessed; and many who were paralyzed and lame were healed. And there was great joy in that city. [Acts 8:5-8]

Philip has some of the coolest stories. One day God said, “Go over there,” and he met a senior administration official from Ethiopia, a guy who has come almost 2000 miles to worship God, who had questions about the Messiah from his readings in Isaiah. Phil introduces him to Jesus and the guy wants to get baptized in the first puddle they pass.

When they come up out of the water, God transports Philip to Azotus, a coastal town 30 miles north. That’s just plain cool.

 

As I was enjoying the stories about Philip, my mind recalled, “This is Philip the rookie Deacon, not Philip the apostle.” Besides, these are the actions of a young and enthusiastic revivalist, not a senior church leader.

I considered, “Some of those deacons did some pretty great things!”

And as I was thinking this, it seemed that Father whispered, “Correlation is not causation.”

OK, that caught me off guard. I waited. He didn’t say any more, but I realized I was correlating “Philip is a deacon,” with “Philip has some awesome God stories!”

Both statements are true, but they are not necessarily connected. Just because Phil was a deacon, just because Phil served widows does not explain Phil showing up in the middle of Azotus, dripping wet from the baptism, with no wet footprints behind him. (No wonder people listened to his preaching!)

The principle strikes me as much bigger than Phil’s wet footprints in the desert.

Just because Jesus spit in the dirt and rubbed the resulting mud in a blind guy’s eyes does not mean that spitting in dirt is the way to heal blindness. [See John 9:6]

Just because Jesus was the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” does not mean that God set Adam & Eve up to fail.

I’ll bet you can think of some other correlations that we are tempted to think of as cause-and-effect stories.

On the other hand, this principle does not prohibit deacons from doing amazing things in God, and does not prohibit God from healing blind eyes with mud. God knowing what’s going to happen does not imply that God caused it to happen.

It seems to me that we’ve been too darned lazy in our faith. We see two things together and we’re quick think “Cause and effect!” And if I’m honest, too many Bible teachers are quick to point out such correlations, because they preach well and because digging deeper is kind of a lot of work! And so we just believe them.

So this is going to be another point in my ongoing story of “Believers need to think for themselves, durn it!” We need to think things through with the insight of Holy Spirit more than … well … more than short-cutting the process.

The One to Whom I Will Give This Piece of Bread

Jesus was pretty well known for obtuse answers to simple questions. People were regularly befuddled when he answered their questions. We could look at the places where he confuses people.

But he kind of goes to some strange lengths when he's outing Judas as his betrayer, during the last supper.

John describes it in chapter 13 of his biography.

"8 “I am not referring to all of you; I know those I have chosen. But this is to fulfill this passage of Scripture: ‘He who shared my bread has turned against me.’

19 “I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am who I am.

20 Very truly I tell you, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me.”

21 After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.”

22 His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant.

23 One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him.

24 Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”

25 Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”

26 Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot.

27 As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him. So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.”

28 But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him.

I've often wondered why Jesus was so cryptic about it. I was listening to it again this afternoon when it hit me: the answer is Genesis 1, isn't it?

In Genesis 1, God creates the whole universe in six days, and he does it by speaking. He says a thing, and then the thing is created.

In John 1, it's clarified that it was Jesus that was doing the speaking. And here, Jesus is sitting around the table, talking with his Boys, and he's NOT speaking the thing that every one of them is asking: Who is it.

Today it struck me that if Jesus had said, "Judas is going to betray me," then the power of Genesis 1:3 (and Mark 11:14) would be released & Judas might have been controlled by the creative words of the Creator declaring his future.

Jesus was carefully and intentionally leaving Judas's will untouched by supernatural power of the Creator's declaration, so he dances around the subject, and finally answers the question with actions, not with words. (And that is the closest thing to an interpretive dance in the Scriptures, I suppose.)

That is, by the way, the primary tactical difference between a legitimately prophetic word and good wishes: the word that is spoken from God, that is the true prophetic word, carries not only information about God's will in the circumstances, but also carries the power to cause it to come about.

We can discuss (and I have already strained my brain thinking about) whether Judas's God-given free will would triumph over Jesus God-empowered words: did Judas really have the free will to choose not to betray Jesus?

I think that is exactly the reason for the interpretive dance: Jesus wanted to leave no room for that accusation for the generations to follow. Jesus could NOT have influenced Judas with his words, since he didn't use his words to discuss Judas.

This shouts to me of God's impressive forethought, of course, but also of his remarkable kindness. By handing Judas a bite of dinner, he eliminates squabbles among his children for centuries to come. (Not that we haven't found other things to squabble about....)

Church Leaders and Pruning Vines

The other weekend, I discovered that while I had been out of town, my tomato vines had gotten completely out of control. Instead of neat and tidy plants producing lots of delicious fruit, they had turned into raging green monsters that were producing more and more out-of-control raging green vines.

I picked up my pruning shears and went to town. Before I was done, I had hauled away two large garbage cans full of unfruitful (or barely fruitful) vines. I reflected on a couple of things.

First, I realized that by not pruning the tomatoes gently and regularly, now I had to prune them fairly harshly, and the result showed: instead of a well-balanced fruitful plant, when I was done, I had plants with great gaps in their branches, but at least they had the potential for growing some fruit now.

Second, I remembered our Lord's promise: “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” John 15:2. The promise of his care for me (more consistent than my care for my tomatoes, I assume) in order that I might bear fruit.

Then this week, I saw that while I had been tending my tomatoes and weeding my garden and harvesting my garlic, my grapevine had gotten completely out of control as well. Another raging green monster, oh boy.

I picked up my pruning shears (and a stepladder this time) and went to work. And I thought about the lessons of pruning the tomatoes, and realized that those lessons applied here, too.

But I learned another lesson with the grapes. Unlike with the tomatoes, I really didn't know what I was doing with pruning the grapes. This was beyond my training, beyond my experience, and I knew it. Furthermore, I realized that while I was doing the best I knew how to do, the reality was that the pruning was harsh and probably excessive. And I knew it was my fault, but the grapevine paid the price for my ignorance.

It was at that point that I heard Father whisper, “You’ve just described a very large number of pastors, Son.” I can tell you I paused to think about that one for a good while.

And as I considered it, I realized that pastors are a lot like gardeners: their values are for the nurture and development of the garden entrusted to them. But occasionally, someone in their care gets excited and starts growing out of control. In my own history, I remember a staid little Presbyterian congregation with a dozen individuals stepping out of the pastor’s influence to participate in the Jesus People Movement.

We discovered intimate relationship with Jesus; we discovered the Holy Spirit; we discovered that the Bible really is interesting and practical. We got terribly excited.

And the pastors didn’t know what to do with this revival. This was beyond their training, beyond their experience, and they knew it. And as a result, their responses to our untidy, out-of-control enthusiasm was harsh and probably excessive.

And Father pointed out to me that they actually realized their limitations, they regretted the damage they were doing, but they had to do something! We really were turning into out-of-control, raging monsters (the fact that we were teenagers didn’t help matters any).

But suddenly I was more sympathetic for those pastors, and for pastors today that are dealing with congregants who get excited and start growing much faster, maybe even irresponsibly.

Some of them are panicking, dealing with situations beyond the training of their seminary or Bible school. They feel (whether rightly or wrongly) that they need to bring that raging, out-of-control enthusiasm under control, and they respond more harshly, more damagingly than they would if they had more experience (or better training).

Some of the church leaders you and I have encountered (and it’s not all pastors, is it?) have been threatened by our excitement, our enthusiasm, our vigorous change. That doesn’t mean we quit growing, of course. And it doesn't mean we get angry, take our ball and go away, either.

Some of these leaders will never understand. Some will, like the leaders of Jesus' time, declare, “If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.” [John 11:48] Some will wish they could throw it all away and join us.

But a whole lot of leaders will be open to learning more, even if we scare them, even if it’s difficult. I’m encouraged to work on building bridges, so the whole Body can grow.

EVERY Good Gift

I hold a belief that I don't think I've heard others talk about before. So of course I need to talk about it.

This is one of those things that I *think* I believe. I observe that I live my life as if it's true.

Jesus' younger brother, James said this: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” [James 1:17]

So I've been thinking about that verse for a few years (like you do).

+  *EVERY* good and perfect gift is from Father. If it's a good gift, then Father is behind it. If my Mama gave me a cookie, then I'm (very) careful to thank her for it, but I still figure that God was behind it, because that's who He is. So I give thanks to Him as well.

+ Every gift that comes from Father is good and perfect. This does Not assume that everything that comes into my life comes from God. If it's bringing stealing, killing and/or destruction, then it's from somebody else. What my Father gives is always good and perfect.

+ “Heavenly lights.” I still don’t know what to do with that, so I try not to let it distract me from what God IS saying to me in this. (Don’t get sidetracked on this one, please.)

+ God does not change like shifting shadows. Someone else has said that he’s the same yesterday, today & forever. That works for me.

One of my personal goals is to increase my thankfulness. This integrates with that pretty nicely. Any good thing comes to me, I give thanks to my Father, regardless of who handed it to me.
 

Jesus Misdirects the Literalists

I recently stumbled over yet another place where Jesus sets up the literalists for failure. It seems he did that a number of times.

One time was in John 2. He had just made a whip out of cords (a slow and tedious process, by the way) and cleaned out the temple of the religious merchants who were taking advantage of the worshipers.

"The Jews" (the religious authority figures) were demanding to know his authority for such a disruptive action; they asked for a sign to demonstrate that authority.

"Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days," he replied [John 2:19]

That's kind of a pretty black-and-white statement, isn't it. There's nothing in the context to give away that this needed to be interpreted metaphorically, though Scripture tells us that detail [2:21].

Now let's be honest, this particular group of people were not experiencing a teachable moment. Rather, this was one of those times that they were not particularly disposed to hearing the truth from him. These people were apparently so committed to their authority (and to their profits) that they were unwilling to hear the truth. So he hides it in metaphor, but he doesn't tell the unteachable ones that he's hiding truth from them. 

Another situation was in John 6, where he was trying to speak truth about spiritual matters to people who had just had one free lunch and were looking for another. These guys were asking for a sign, too (v30), though they were not very subtle about the fact that they really wanted the free lunch (v31), and Jesus knew it (v26).

In all fairness, he spent quite a lot of energy (v35 - 51) trying to communicate actual truth with them. It seems to always happen: when their source of free food made it clear that there will not be any free food today, they turned on him (v51), and so he does it again: he speaks truth in metaphor, but doesn't tell them that it's a metaphor. (If you pay attention, you can maybe see this happening in our Federal government these days, too.)

"Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." [John 6:53, and repeatedly through v58].

From the hindsight of the New Covenant and the Last Supper [See Luke 22], we know that he's talking about eating the bread and drinking the cup of the New Covenant; people who do not join with Him in the New Covenant don't have life in them. But they thought he was talking about literal cannibalism, and they had every reason to think that.

But being honest again, this group of people had resisted Jesus' best attempts at making this a teachable moment. These folks had committed themselves inflexibly to one view of Jesus. So again, he hides the truth in metaphor, but he doesn't tell the unteachable ones that he's hiding it from them.

And this is the point where that gets more than usually uncomfortable for me. I've been a rather un-gracious proponent of Biblical Literalism in various points in my history: Interpret it all literally unless it says not to. In fairness, I was reacting to a movement that had explained away all of the supernatural events in the Bible by calling them metaphors for spiritual reality. I didn't like that. (But over-reacting is seldom a successful response.)

And then I realized that Jesus is still in the business of hiding truth in plain sight. From time to time, he still hides the truth in metaphorical (or "apocalyptic" or even "prophetic") language. And he still doesn't tell us that he's doing that.

There are still believers for whom truth is hidden. There are some people who are so committed to their power, their position and their paycheck that despite their words, they don't really want the truth; it might threaten all that. And there are some believers who are so convinced that their view is the right view, so they shut down any truth that challenges that.

Some of these are Christian leaders, and I'm guessing that we could all point to some (but let's not, OK?). And scads of them write books and promote their views on social media, and I'm pretty sure we've all run into some of them.


But the bigger lesson is not for "them." It's for "me" and for "us." Not a one of us is immune from these truth-blinding errors. I guess we need to read the Bible for ourselves and let both Holy Spirit and our brothers & sisters help us see the truth that Jesus has hidden where we least expect it.