Tribal Hearts - Nations and Cultures vs. Jesus

Natural human  loyalty to one’s own group - tribe, peer group, economic or social class, political party,  etc. - directly conflicts with the gospel of Christ. The twelve tribes of Israel lost their distinctive identities during the diaspora, but the thousands of human language and culture groups around the world present a two-fold challenge. The first is that Jesus told His disciples that He would not return and the present age would not end until the gospel has been preached to every nation. (Matthew 24:14, Mark 13:10). (More on this later.) The second is that every person must value his or her connection to Christ above all other identifications, including that of ancestry, language, culture, peer group, social class - any competing loyalty. 

Although Paul identified his credentials for potentially boasting in ancestry and tribal identity (2 Cor 11:22, Phil. 3:5), he wrote to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28, NASB). He elaborated with respect to his own identity to the Philippians: 

More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. [Philippians 3:8-11, NASB].

The key point is that there is nothing meritorious in God’s eyes about tribalism; it is a residual of the Tower of Babel curse (Genesis 11:7-9). God judged humankind for wanting to be like God by confounding their language; sadly, we humans came to love the judgment. Later, God mocked the Israelites’ ancestor worship (Jeremiah 11:10) even before the Incarnation. Any version of Christianity that does not call believers to leave ancestor worship and tribal loyalties does not bring them into the direct connection of knowing Christ experientially (as Paul exhorted, above), however wonderful its doctrine and practices. 

We know that tribalism will persist until Jesus’ return. (Matthew 24:30). The mention of the worship of Christ by every tribe at the time of the end and in heaven (Revelation 1:7, 5:9, 7:9) illustrates God’s final triumph over the sin of Babel. That is why the gospel must be preached to every nation. But it also reinforces the necessity that we must derive our identity from Jesus - who He is and what He calls us to be - through direct experience with Him. Our political allegiances must fall away in the light of the eternal Son of God, or we will perish with them. (Revelation 6:16).

Verboten Reconciliation

At the end of the Civil War, a number of key leaders chose the path of reconciliation. Jay Winik details the leaders and the decisions they made in his book, April 1865: The Month That Saved America. In the present day, we do not fight internally with weapons that kill, but with words that tear asunder the social fabric. When the current process ends (as it must, eventually, one way or another) will the nation be permanently divided? 

An eloquent plea can be found in the peace prayer attributed to St. Francis.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy;  

O Divine Master,

Grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love. 

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.  

Such a prayer may well express the heartfelt desire of many on all sides of political rancor. But there is a problem. It is verboten. It is politically incorrect to express Christian thoughts, ideas, or sentiments in political life. In some contexts, the courts have ruled it illegal and unconstitutional.  

This cultural norm has even more poisonous implications than current politics in Washington, D.C. We have rejected and excluded from our nation’s public life the only possible source of life itself. We are rejecting the very Gift of Christmas, Him of whom the angels sang “Peace on Earth, Good Will toward men.” In accepting the lie of the devil that Jesus has no place in public discourse, we have condemned our public forum to separation from Him, into the outer darkness of divine separation.

Overcoming the Curse of the Sins of the Fathers

As I watch my peers age into the final retirement from life, I cannot escape the observation of how closely the law of cause and effect tracks with Moses’ warning that the sins of the fathers would be visited on the children to the third and fourth generation. (e.g. Numbers 14:18: The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; ) There is nothing mysterious about the children of an abusive or narcissistic parent having crippling self-esteem issues or lacking normal relationship skills —  these being natural consequences in the psychological realm. 

Consequences in the natural realm are equally obvious. Illegitimate children historically were scorned or shunned or worse, despite no fault of their own. In ancient times the children of debtors might be sold into slavery to satisfy the debts of the father. Habits of men, such as drug use, criminal activity, or sexual promiscuity, are often inescapable for children growing up seeing them as normal.

God promises similar inheritance in the spiritual realm. Deuteronomy 5:7-9 is the clearest statement of His punishment for idolatry. The first and second commandments carry the warning of spiritual cause and effect, linked to God’s nature and character. There is evidently an invisible but powerful spiritual dynamic that transmits spiritual adultery - worship of false gods - to descendants. 

And yet, there is also the possibility of redemption even under O.T. Law. Deuteronomy 24:16. Jeremiah 31:29-34 goes even further, promising a new covenant, written on our hearts, in the context of transcending the law of generational curses. 

What happens, all too often, is that children grow up with optimism that hard work will build their lives, not recognizing the curse that clings. The curse was in fact broken through the blood of Christ on the cross (Galatians 3:13),  but His Blood must be applied to our lives individually through identification  with Christ. Not just once through a declaration of faith (the starting point), but daily through a relationship with the risen and ascended Christ. Not just a generic petition or statement of faith, but a discussion with Him of the specific issues of our life, our unique struggles, and His specific will for our life. It is through this (and the discipline/discipling that He applies — Hebrews 12:5-11) that we are changed into His image (2 Corinthians 3:18), and at the end of our earthly journey, will have shed the baggage of our forebears’ sins, going back four generations. 

The alternative approach, most sadly, is to trust in God’s forgiveness and continue to live out the lifestyle and choices of our forebears and our own worldly decisions.  The consequences cannot be avoided forever. As we reap them later in life, we cannot pretend to not see the truth of Virgil’s observation: facilis descensum Averno.

The Scriptures are clear on this point. Striving against sin (clearly our own sin, regardless of generational curse) involves not only the shed blood of Christ in the spiritual realm, but pain in the natural and psychological realms on our part. Self-denial. Grief over consequences of our actions. Payment in the physical world. We can’t purchase holiness, but when we pay a price for sin it helps motivate us to change our ways. The first verse of “I’d Rather Have Jesus” captures this mindset.  But deliverance from original sin, from the curse, only happens if we choose to actively work for it. And it is in this context that the power of the Holy Spirit overcomes the curses we inherit from our forebears, going back to Adam.

Guerrilla Redemption?

When at Appomattox, Robert E. Lee did not dispatch his army into the field to wage guerrilla war against the North, he chose the road less traveled. The choice of unconventional warfare would have been easy to justify on the surface - continued struggle for their righteous cause, hope that will to fight would soon crumble in the North. The colonists had engaged in it as part of the American Revolution. Instead, he chose the hard path of reunion and reconciliation. Many before and after him have chosen to fight.

When does guerrilla warfare become terrorism? It is oft quoted that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. We certainly have modern examples in the Mideast, Northern Ireland, Somalia ... the list is endless, of causes that have degenerated from political advocacy to pure terrorism motivated by hatred. The unforeseen consequence of beginning a campaign of unconventional warfare is that most of the time it devolves. To engage in a sustained guerrilla war is to take the position that one’s cause is so important, so righteous, that everyone must be deprived of any kind of stability and social peace unless the rebels can get their way (or until they are annihilated to the last man). Rebel fighters choose this for both themselves and their enemies, but also for their own families.  

It sounds simple (perhaps obvious) to say that such people have been duped by the devil. He is the ultimate source of evil. Look at the choice that he and the rest of the fallen angels made. Being in the presence of YHWH and experiencing His glory, they chose to rebel. And this knowing that the consequences would be defeat, and ultimately eternal imprisonment in the lake of fire. In the meantime, they inspire humans to follow them into ultimately futile rebellion, bringing chaos to humanity, justifying evil in the service of some “higher” cause. (Terrorists are far from the only purveyors of evil, but often the most brazen.)

How is the human condition different than the angels? Simply this. We live (for now) in time and do not know the future. We have free will and can choose good or evil and then change our mind. Evidently, because the angels knew with full certainty the consequences of rebellion and choose it anyway, they are beyond repentance and redemption. But God so loved the world that He sent His uniquely begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. We are reconciled to God not because we negotiated a peace treaty, but because He paid the price for our sins, our evil choices, and delivers us from their consequences and power, through the blood of Jesus. And we have in this life the freedom to repent and choose!

What does this mean for the current political animus in our capitol? Is reconciliation possible? If there were a revival, perhaps. If Billy Graham were to rise from the dead to hold evangelistic services at the Capitol and the White House, if the Holy Spirit were to come with power, if self-righteous pols were to repent, it might be possible. Realistically, to quote Virgil, facilis descensum Averno. Grace to the politician who proves my skepticism wrong, by revealing God’s glory.

Gun Control vs. Evil in the land

No one should dispute that daily mass shootings manifest evil in our land. Unfortunately, proposed remedies do not address the root cause. The government facilitated the moral collapse of America, but is not the agent to remedy it.

Why did Germans accept the Third Reich and its extermination of 6 million Jews, or Russians accept Stalin’s pogroms and murder of 20 million of their nation? How does evil become commonplace and tolerated in a land? Sadly, it appears to be the same process that leads to individual corruption. A Biblical example can be traced in Judas: a human sin, theft (John 12:6); yielding to the devil’s temptation (John 13:2); being fully under Satan’s Control (Luke 22:3).  Trace a modern example in the heartbreaking song by Casting Crowns, It’s A Slow Fade (from the sound track of the movie Fireproof). Each violation of our conscience and the conviction of the Holy Spirit makes the next easier.

What does the individual’s path to perdition tell us about national moral collapse? The process of hardening the conscience of a nation is simply that of sharing our values, for good or bad, through common channels such as media (news, entertainment), public behavior, and ultimately social institutions and governments. What was once frowned upon becomes acceptable, and those advocating “traditional values” are labeled, marginalized, and ultimately ignored. Each new breach of a sin threshold becomes easier.

But wait! You say, only a segment of society has subscribed to that degradation. Sadly, even though only approximately one third of Germans supported the Nazi party, very few of the majority actively opposed their oppressive rule. Shirer’s tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, records this sad chapter.

The current vituperation of political partisanship parallels that of the pre-Civil War era. The issue then was slavery. Both sides claimed Biblical support for their position, but ultimately one side prevailed and the decision was made.[1] What issue divides us today? Sadly, it seems that we argue about whether there is any place for faith in, and obedience to God in our political life. Where did our government facilitate rebellion against God? Was it Roe vs. Wade (1973)? Engel v. Vitale (1962)?

Facilis descensus Averno.[2]  [Virgil, Aeneid, book VI, line 126]

The degradation of society can biblically be traced via Romans 1:18-32. Professing to be wise they became fools ... and rebelled against God. At both a personal and group level, rebellion against God opens the door to evil.  As Paul explained to the Romans, in rejecting God’s direction, we, with His permission, give ourselves over to vile passions and a reprobate mind, and ultimately reap what we sow. (Proverbs 22:8, Hosea 8:7, Galatians 6:7)

Since we now harvest decades of sowing, what hope is there of recovery? Even if we admit this root cause of evil in the land, how do we recover? Biblical examples are bleak. Only Rahab and her family were saved from Jericho, only Lot and his daughters from Sodom. Remember Lot’s wife. (Luke 17:32) Since the time of Christ there are examples of nations, including our own, that have had tremendous revivals in response to the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit. However, it seems that modern culture is impervious.

There is a political and social point that bears further discussion. The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution starts with “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...” This was interpreted in Engel v. Vitale, using the 14th amendment, to apply to the states. Thru various subsequent cases, this ultimately ended with a ban on student-led prayer, in Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe (2000). Students and school districts aren’t the Congress or a state, but dropping context allowed the Supreme Court to legalistically bam them anyway.

Gun control as a remedy for resident evil is a bit like taking aspirin for cancer. It may alleviate immediate symptoms, but does not address the root cause. We may argue that the 14th amendment was implemented in the environment of abolishing slavery and establishing federal sovereignty for that purpose. Gun ownership and exercise of religion are protected in the same bill of rights (2^nd & first amendments, respectively), but they are not the same kind of thing. The legal interpretation of some rights as absolutes and others as context-sensitive seems Pharisaical. (Matthew 23:24) The missing element is that in rebellion against God, evil is free to flourish irregardless of legal rights or restraining laws. We can’t legislate what is in people’s hearts. But if we have legislated God out of the picture, we have removed the only potential remedy for evil.

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[1] The connection of the Emancipation Proclamation to the victory of the Union is discussed in my Memorial Day blog.

[2] The descent to hell is easy

Too Realistically X-rated for the Hallmark Channel

Book Review - The Masterpiece - by Francine Rivers

This “romance” novel could never be made into a Hallmark channel movie, in any conceivable space-time continuum. The gritty but realistic, in-depth depiction of the impact of parents’ dysfunctional lives on children when they grow up cannot be shown in a G-rated program. The story asks , can these people find love in any real sense (something beyond elevated pulse rates and swooning over steamy kisses)? Depends on a few things:

• What love is: a decision to commit to another person’s well-being.
• Growing up enough to make that kind of decision, not being driven by sentimentality, nor wallowing in wants and feelings.
• Overcoming the generational curses that adult children inherit from their parents 
• Being willing to learn from the school of hard knocks.

These are the themes that this book explores in graphic but fascinating detail.

If there is any shortcoming in this novel, it is the deus ex machina conclusion that results in the protagonists living happily ever after. Really? Three months of pre-marital counseling that is passed over in one paragraph. Granted, for a novel of this length, the reader is ready for the author to resolve all issues keeping happiness away from our heroes. But this is the Hallmark Channel approach to romantic tension and conflict. Could a novel be written (and would it be subsequently read?) that walks through the storms of counseling, of confronting deeply buried childhood wounds, breaking agreement with ghosts of the sins of the fathers visited on the second and third generation? The realism of conflict in life trumped by the fantasy of fairy tale endings. Perhaps we need these endings because our own life is so painful. 

One takeaway challenge: we as parents have transmitted our own dysfunction to our children. Everyone has, since Adam and Eve. What can we do? I see three specific thrusts, not part of this or any novel I have ever read:

• Seek out appropriate help to confront and renounce our own inherited and self-chosen sin: Counseling; pastoral care; personal self-examination (The examen prayer).
• Be honest with our children about our own failures and encourage them to seek and receive whatever practical help they can to shed the baggage we have left them. To renounce all agreements they have made with the world, the flesh, and the devil.
• In prayer, plead the blood of Jesus over our children, to break the curse of generational inherited sin.

Migrants & Human Sacrifice: A Warning From Herman Cortes

Human sacrifice is the thread that connects the ancient Israelites, Herman Cortes, and the current flood of migration. More specifically, God’s hatred of it.

• God’s judgment on societies that brazenly endorse lawlessness usually comes through external parties, such as the Israelites destruction of the Canaanites. (But not always, cf. Genesis 19:24-25). Cortes, unwittingly or intentionally, brought such to the Aztec nation.
• The Canaanites feared the Israelites because they recognized YHWH among them, and sensed that their gods could not protect them. (Joshua 2:9-11) Is fear of migrants really fear that God’s favor is not on us?
• Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob dwelt in tents as a sign to the Canaanites of impending judgment. However, it is faith and obedience that God honors, not external behaviors. 

Abraham was a migrant who is credited with looking for that city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Hebrews 11:10) He did not find a resting place in the world, did not receive what was promised, because God has provided something better than a city of gold. (Hebrews 11:39) The Israelites later left Egypt under duress. Joshua led them to dispossess and destroy the Canaanites under orders, because their iniquity was ripe. (Genesis 15:16)

Was Herman Cortes directed by God like Joshua, or simply God’s unwitting tool, to end an evil culture that worshipped false gods through human sacrifice? The church eventually sent missionaries and priests to follow and travel with the soldiers as the Spanish empire developed. Visible reminders of this can be seen  along the Rio Grande in New Mexico and El Camino Real in California. Coronado later searched in vain for cities of gold, with no mention of human sacrifice by the Zuni (that I can find).

In Scripture, reference to cities and streets of gold (Rev. 21:18 & 21) has the purpose of symbolizing God’s nature and character. Other places connect gold to the great harlot of Revelation. (17:4, 18:16) The difference between can be best understood in Hebrews 11:10.

Contrast this with the pilgrims and puritans who came to New England. They came looking for freedom, especially to worship without being under the thumb of the Church of England. They attempted to convert the native Americans. They prospered, but not in the sense of finding treasure troves of gold. Their legacy is the culture and belief system that underlies the founding of this nation. 

What are modern migrants seeking? Most likely, a better life. Is the attraction of moving from Central America to the U. S. as a citadel of faith and freedom to worship God according to their own conscience? Fleeing poverty and oppression?  Perhaps is the opportunity they seek framed entirely in economic and political terms? The streets of Los Angeles are not paved with gold. The most recent pictures suggest that what awaits migrants is much more akin (in physical terms) to dwelling in tents, but even so, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? (Hebrews 11:9). Unfortunately, the homeless tent encampments in major cities seem to be largely characterized by drug abuse, crime (the homeless being mostly victims), and begging for survival.  

The city of The Angels in Southern California is not the earthly realization of that City described in Revelation 21, which the heroes of faith sought per their encomium in Hebrews 11. Those already living in the U.S. and enjoying the earthly fruit of early immigrants’ heritage may or may not be inclined to share with new migrant arrivals, depending on their political persuasion. Their souls are just as much at risk as the souls of those seeking earthly empire like Cortes, if they focus on the things of this world instead of seeking the God of creation and redemption. 

Do modern human sacrifices of abortion to the gods of convenience, pleasure, craven lust, irresponsibility, or ambition result in God using migrants to destroy our society and culture just as Joshua did the Canaanites and Cortez the Aztecs? Is this really about migrants, or God’s chastisement (and warning) to us? Several states have instituted laws significantly limiting abortion, which the liberal establishment hopes to nullify through the courts. But what of the people of our nation? It makes little difference who wins in courts or legislatures if we, the people, rebel against God. Redemption is found only through repenting of and changing our mind about our own sin, and receiving the gracious gift of God, so that we change our lives.

A closing observation: The gods whom the Canaanites served with human sacrifice were powerless against YHWH. The evil of human sacrifice is ultimately impotent.  (Joshua 2:24)