On God's Grace, Anger Fantasies, and a Bad Muffler by Chris White

Actual Car not pictured

"Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life"

                                                                                    --Proverbs 4:23

The constraints of my situation prohibit me from elaborating, but I do have an enemy.   It's not the devil (although he certainly does appear on my list as The Enemy!) nor is it someone who is or ever has been a member of the church or on the church staff.  Thus, no need to guess or try to figure out who this person is as it really is not important.  My point in bringing this up is I was out walking (as is my custom) the other night and thinking what Pastor Rick has often referred to as "anger fantasies" about this person.  It started out as prayer but, to be honest, it quickly degenerated into thinking incoherent thoughts like "God, if you are going to forgive this person, I'm not sure I even want to be in heaven."  In that moment I heard back from God and thankfully it wasn't "okay Chris, I'll bear that in mind and judge you accordingly!"  So how did God speak to me and what did he say?  In that moment a car drove by me on this quiet street.  It's muffler was noisy enough that it caused me to look up as it went by.  On the back of the car in 10 inch letters were the words " Jesus said love your enemies!".   I wish I could say a warm rush of God's love enveloped me in that moment and that I was immediately quickened by the Spirit to actually love my enemy, but that is not what happened.  But my heart did stop its tirade and was, as the song goes, "sweetly broken" by the truth sent to me from God.  For I knew the message on the back of the car was for me and was shorthand for larger passage of scripture:

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. " (Matt. 5:43-48)

It's a hard truth, especially if you have been grievously injured by another person, yet we are not called to have warm feelings for our enemies, but to return to them the same grace God has given to us.  Its easy to forget that in the face of our rebellion and enmity towards God, God showed us His favor and grace.  He asks us to extend the same and in the doing of that we reflect in a small way His likeness and so prove to be His sons.

Was the Church Lady Right? by Chris White

Many years ago comedian Dana Carvey had a regular sketch on Saturday Night Live called "Church Chat".  "Church Chat" was a mock television show where news of the week and cultural developments would be reviewed from the perspective of a buttoned-up, judgmental, Bible-thumping character called the Church Lady.  Of course the punch line of the sketch invariably led to her regular evaluation: "I don't know who inspired that….could it be….SATAN!"  It was irreverent, mocking, and of course quite hilarious and even as I write, I'm smirking in remembrance of her sketch with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker or was that Jim and Tammy Baye Faker?  Memory seems to fail me.

It was all in good fun and the Church Lady is definitely a caricature of a type of Christian who sees the devil behind everything even when there is an obvious explanation that would be to the contrary.  There is an equal but opposite type of a Christian as well who sees every little thing that happens as God's direct benediction upon their lives.  If a person like this had been in the passenger seat during my commute to work this morning they would have said "oh, praise the Lord!  He's given us favor with hitting all green lights this morning!".  The reality was that I was purposefully speeding and maniacally weaving in and out of traffic on wet pavement and in the fog.  So if God was blessing me, it was not his favor towards my sin, just mercy on my stupidity.  But these extremes aside, I do want to go on record as saying Church Lady not completely wrong in her assertions about the Prince of Darkness.

I believe in the person of Satan.  I  reject the position that the devil is a human fabrication to explain why decent human beings make really bad choices.  I equate such thinking with the belief that the stork delivers babies to people and that Santa Claus and his elves live at the North Pole and only come out at Christmastime (even these symbolic images are accretions on some serious facts).  Satan is also not an impersonal force of evil exerting influence on humanity like gravity or barometric pressure.  There are plenty of people who believe such things and as C.S. Lewis would say, nothing would delight the Enemy more than we don't believe he exists.

If the polls are true, Satan must be do a happy dance every time he thinks about America .  Belief surveys tend to show a clear majority of Americans (55-57%) do not believe that Satan exists.  The  Barna group who polled only Christians on this question several years ago showed that 59% didn't believe in the person of the devil.  So, if Barna is to be believed here, those people who self-identify as Christians believe even less in the devil than the general population does.  Brilliant.  Once again, I'm certain nothing delights the devil more and I guess I must identify with the minority of self-professing Christians who believe the Bible should be taken literally.

Satan as he appears in the scriptures is at great variance with the devil of public imagination.  He is described as quite beautiful in appearance and not the least bit red or having horns, tail, or a pitchfork in his possession.  What is taught about the evil one is that he is an angelic being created by God who became so arrogant that he attempted to oppose his Creator and in so rebelling became the devil.  His complicity in the occasion of Original Sin reveals something of his nature and his own rebellion against God.  He appears to the parents of the human race as some form of attractive creature and through subtle suggestion leads them to believe God has been less than good to them and that they should take control of their own destiny.  Such a plan had a serious plausibility factor built into it, but when acted upon was quite disastrous and in the end delivered none of its promises.  Beguiling people with stellar appearance, promising them a glorious future and then delivering them to a diminished existence is not a strategy that is limited to American politics alone.  It is the essential core of Satan's standard operating procedure.

Two of the names ascribed to Satan are a dark angel "masquerading as an angel of light" (2 Cor.11:14) and the "accuser of the brethren"(Rev. 12:10).  There are many other names or descriptions for the devil given in the Bible, but these two give insight his strategies against Christians.   The principle effort of Satan is to deceive a person in such a way as to disconnect them from God.  Please listen carefully here.  I am not saying Satan can disconnect God from you.  I am saying he will do most anything he can to get you to sever your ties with the Lord.  Surprisingly one of his best tools for this is religion.   What makes religion good is that it elevates the human mind and soul with an insight that is greater than ourselves about how to live, think, and treat others.  By the same token, this is what makes religion so dangerous as well.  Not all religions are true (unless of course you believe that logical contradictions are logical) which means that if the light you get from it is not true, you find yourself doing things like flying airliners into New York skyscrapers or committing group suicide when you spot a comet in the sky.  The Devil very obviously cloaks himself in religious light to appeal to man's spiritual bent, but what he speaks from behind the masquerade is anything but the truth.

Where I live (the state of Oregon) religious people are much fewer and most people shy away from the spiritual.  What I have long observed here is that Satan has another plan for the more secularized which leads them to give ultimate value to very temporal things.  I'm not saying there is anything wrong with recreation or family or hobbies, but for too many this has become the thing of supreme value which means for all intent and purposes, God's place has been usurped by snowmobiling or worse yet, a new iphone (I have watched people in airports gaze at their smartphones with expressions that border on worshipful ).   Then of course there is the chemical pathway to meaning.  Drugs and alcohol are horrible addictions which I would not make light of, but in a sense they artificially produce many of the same things people would find in religion.  Drink enough merlot or smoke enough weed and at least for a while there is peace of mind and even a mild sensation of transcendence.  Of course it’s illusory and never ends well for the person, but that was exactly the point.

What is so devilish about all these things is people are lured in (rarely against their own wishes) and once they are in deep enough, Satan finishes his work of destruction.  If you are trapped in a false religion or are an atheist, secularist, or drug addict, he’ll nurture you along until you die separated from God like he is.  If you belong to Christ, once you’ve been lured away with his temptations and are trapped, he will do what he can to discredit you and render you completely neutralized.  He is the accuser of the brethren because he knows God is holy and just and wants us condemned and punished even as he is going to be in the future.

In this matter,  Satan is right.  God is holy and just and does condemn and punish sin.  If He didn’t do so He could hardly be considered holy or just.  But this is where the good news of the Gospel needs to be taken to heart.  God is able to remain perfectly just and holy while at the same time show mercy and grace to sinners because He sent His son Jesus to die and take our judgment upon Himself.  This was a costly thing done for us but if He who is creator and judge assumes our penalty, then truly are no longer guilty or condemned by God.   Satan may accuse us before God all he wants, and in every regard it could be said those accusations are not without warrant.  We are all guilty as charged.  But the penalty is already paid by Jesus, which effectively leaves you not innocent, but forgiven in the eyes of God.  This is why Christians say we are not perfect, just forgiven, unless of course you are the Church Lady.  She is perfect.  Now, isn’t that special?