Lamentations

I recently listened to a speaker take several hours to relate how the book of Lamentations relates to everyday life today (this one message, for example). I could not help but nod my head at many points, but shake my head in dismay at others. Let’s be honest: Americans have lost the ability to grieve and weep. Let’s be more honest: We don’t usually like it when people grieve and weep.

Rembrant - Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem

Tradition says that several hundred years before the birth of Christ, a prophet named Jeremiah nestled into a cave to spend time alone. There, “The Weeping Prophet” spent an agonizing time sobbing with pen in hand, writing poetry to attempt to make sense of a disaster of earth-shattering and life-altering proportions. He begins:

Oh, oh, oh… How empty the city, once teeming with people.
A widow, this city, once in the front rank of nations,
once queen of the ball, she’s now a drudge in the kitchen.

And later:

Jerusalem remembers the day she lost everything,
when her people fell into enemy hands, and not a soul there to help.
Enemies looked on and laughed, laughed at her helpless silence.

Jerusalem, who outsinned the whole world, is an outcast.
All who admired her despise her now that they see beneath the surface.
Miserable, she groans and turns away in shame.

Jeremiah had easily one of the most difficult ministries of any person in history. He recognized a series of sins and faults of Israel and with groaning, put words to it.

Elsewhere in Scripture, we see other instances of people weeping and expressing their grief in outward ways. Ezra ripped his clothes. Jesus wept. Job went on a verbal tirade, then witnessed God, Himself, go on one of his own. Jeremiah’s entire book has several gut-wrenching prayers and muses about things not going well. Most of the lesser known books of prophecy are that way.

Fluoxetine, aka Prozac, aka Happy Pills

Americans have an addiction to happiness and entertainment, myself included. We must constantly have something to push, watch, or hear. Most Americans would rather take a happy pill to make them happy for the rest of their lives than know how to deal with human feelings. This makes for very productive lives, but lives of suppressed feelings. People can go decades without grieving major life changes like injuries, deaths, and shattered dreams without allowing their emotions to have their time to settle. Its much easier to watch a movie with someone grieving than to grieve ourselves.

What’s more damaging is our inability to help others to grieve. There is nothing worse than having someone there to listen to us grieve something that cannot be fixed, but they keep saying that “everything will be okay” or try to “fix it.“ I’m not going through anything right now, but if I were, that’d be the last thing I’d want to hear.

In a person’s darkest hour what they need more than answers is someone to help ask the questions. A person who will sit in silence and not feel the need to “move things along.” A person who promises to bring dinner every day to ease things. A person to babysit the kids. A friend who will cry, too. Weeping is not for girls – weeping is for humans.

When we encounter someone else in their darkest hour, we should shut off our cell phones, toss our watches, and pull up a chair. Jeremiah’s laments would have been a whole lot easier if it were a cave for two.

When we encounter the worst day of our lives, we should not be afraid to spend time alone sobbing. Its okay to ask a lot of questions and not have a lot of answers. Its okay to protest injustices. But we must remain steadfast with our convictions that God is a good God, who knows what it is to suffer both as a human and having created humans who derailed His plans through sin. God is acquainted with grief, for He has suffered.

Need a way to open up to God? Try brutal honesty – He likes it.

Empire (Part Five)

Since the tragic fall of humanity at the Garden of Eden, humanity has been the stage for a battle that is so spiritual, its physical. The Bible chronicles incredible encounters within an invisible realm where odd things happen, showing this at work:

• Michael, an uber-angel argued with Satan (leader of darker spiritual forces) over the dead body of a great follower of God, Moses
• In a showdown between Moses & prophets of another religous system, a friend of Moses named Aaron threw a staff on the ground that turned into a snake. The other prophets did the same thing for the other side!
• Satan once had a bet with God, himself, over what’d happen if God stopped blessing and helping one of his followers, named Job (pronounced “Jobe”)
• A person named Judas, who betrayed Jesus at one point, had Satan enter into him. That’s a pretty rough thing to have Satan at the joystick of your life’s controller.

These and other reasons in Scripture show this battle is at hand.  Even within society, the forces of anti-Kingdom have been at work to steal from God’s plan for peoples lives, kill their dreams and destinies, and destroy their hope for God to intervene.

Some people propose that this war is overtly obvious and dedicate their lives to praying for victory for God’s side. The truth is, this conflict is fought in a more subtle way: person-to-person. But that person-to-person battle, when played out, becomes bigger. It then becomes family-to-family, generation-to-generation, and more.

Christians often make a tragic mistake by attempting to turn the conflict into a bordered conflict between nations, labeling one as right and one as wrong. Even within their own borders, Christians will proclaim a certain political movement to be God’s Kingdom at work. This process has been played out again and again (and is happening in America), but never leads to the results promised. Jesus Kingdom is political in its conflict, but not to be engaged politically. It is a spiritual movement to reclaim a lost humanity.

 

Lord Vader

The conflict between the sides of Kingdom and anti-Kingdom sets the stage for the real conflct of Empires. Its not as simple as Darth Vader against his son, but instead takes the guise of two great empires on Earth constantly ebbing and flowing – the Empire of Christ and the Empire that opposes Christ. It is a conflict that is fought in battlefields rarely involving bloodshed, but rather, for brainpower, creativity, and household recovery.

All the global empires discussed in depth over the course of this series have been expressions of anti-Kingdom, that is, this world system, attempting to oppress Christ’s movement. Rome sought to execute Christians to put down the love revolution. Egypt opposed Israel leaving oppression to form a society of Christians. Even America’s political system, while more subtle (and perhaps less severe), is a system designed to get people to dedicate their lives to wealth accumulation, entertainment at all times, finding security through military, indebtedness, materialism, revenge, pride, and more.

The belief that a certain political movement, military conquest, political party, financial system, or individual can rescue a people in peril or crisis is a system of anti-Kingdom. Consider:

• Military conquests alone cannot bring Christ’s Kingdom without people who desire to seek Christ
• No financial bailout from a government system will bring happiness to people. Our source is not the government, for we are to put the government of our lives on the shoulders of Christ.
• No president, king, congress, justice, or politician, can bring the sort of change humans really desire. The change humans desire is a return to God’s original intent for humanity. This can’t be found through wealth redistribution, a contract with America, a radio show host’s opinions, or a stuffed ballot box for one candidate or the other.
• The Church’s biggest political movement ever was a disaster that is still providing advances to anti-Kingdom. Quite simply, the Crusades are perhaps the biggest scar on the Church ever beheld.

Christians really executed Jews and Muslims?!?

Christians must devote themselves to bringing the restoration of the Empire of God through the teachings of Christ. His message can and will repair Creation through the processes of discipleship, salvation, and love. Christians are called to spread Jesus message not through billboards, t-shirts, campaign promises, military conquest, or wealth transfer. We have a better banner. Our Kingdom doesn’t come by brute force like other religions propose. Christians have a banner that is appealing and unique. I like the trend in Minnesota bumper stickers to put it best:

Empire (Part Two)

If I were an Egyptian growing up circa 1200 BCE, it would be difficult for me to understand the culture in which I lived. People rarely venture to other nations or read history to gain a perspective of their own, but have their ideas shaped by an ellusive term.

“They.”

We speak often about this concept when imagining new concepts, inventions, frontiers, injustices, and opportunities. “They” are people who have the ability to influence cultures, borders, arts, minds, and more. But to those who are not part of a culture, thanks to stereotypes and nationalities, everyone is a “they.”

I’ve been reading more of the “wrong books.” Enter two more suspects, and their impact.

Jesus Wants to Save Christians

In growing up in an empire called Egypt, with a very revered Pharaoh named Ramesses in whom people placed their hopes and trust, I would know little of the problems my empire was producing. Hebrew slaves being tortured in the name of yet another elaborate pyramid. Forced worship of a political deity. Firstborn children ordered to be executed upon birth. Wars fought to extend borders, with human casualties chalked up as little more than tally marks called “collateral damage.” Starvation of the poor in the midst of a lavish lifestyle for those in power. And the truth is, those at the top of the power structure had no intention to improve things, as they needed to prosper to maintain their power.

And yet, from Mount Horeb, an agricultural nobody who had survived as an infant in a basket raft emerges from obscurity to organize a revolution of slaves. These oppressed, numbers growing expoentially, had cried out to God to end the cycle of death. This empire, structured to make the greedy succeed, was strangling them of their ability to live their lives. Ramesses couldn’t afford this giant labor union to suddenly walk out on his job site. It was as if every construction worker in a region suddenly wanted to quit work and walk away.

Jesus for President

Empire thrives on cooperation. Empire demands having, under its god, just one nation, indivisible. It must have adherents who return to its throne, seeking the treasures of awe and allegiance. Empire cannot survive a people who question its lavish spending, its distrust for the leaders of the state, or taking the dominant script and feeding it into a paper shredder.

And yet, there’s this little problem. This man, who history calls “Moses,” led a slave rebellion for these Jewish families to start something new and fresh. A departure from a system of confusion. Empire hadn’t brought liberty and justice for all. What they needed was an exodus.

Moses’ people started their own nation, which a few generations later, mirrored what they left in Egypt, With the lavish temples, polytheism, and pursuit of military prowess to expand the empire through shock and awe, this small nation bit off more than it could chew. They faced judgement for not doing justice and pursuing their own grandiose vision. This nation-state called Israel was swallowed up by a bigger empire.

And another.
And another.

The Hebrew Testament and New Testament have a name for this endless system of empires, kings, caesars, rulers, presidents, and senators. Its a word that means “confusion,” and does little more than twist God’s agenda for the human race. In the guise of freedom, prosperity, and the will of God, Himself (in whom empire allegedly trusts and is blessed), its called Babylon.

Moses’ nation spent years crying out for a release from the occupation. They were forced again to work to build a kingdom that was designed to keep them building a kingdom. They cried for an end to it all. A release. Freedom.

And in the midst of a land they spent generations living, they had fashioned a cradle. Their cry gave birth to the answer to their passionate pleas for help.

In the form of a baby’s cry.

To be continued…