This is Part III in a three-part series entitled The Disgust of Unworthiness, The Manner Complacent & The Cost of Discipleship. See the footnote tag to find the other posts, or check the home page.

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It would be easy to speak of this topic in a way that leaves both reader and listener under a cloud of self-condemnation and criticism, highlighting their shortcomings. It is important to say on the front end, that “the cost of discipleship” is rarely a one-way ticket to a Muslim country, a third-world nation (or both), nor martyrdom. Personally, I often feel like failure to engage in ⅔ of these makes me an “unsuccessful Christian” somehow.

When folks tried to pin a straight answer from the incarnate Lord and find out what the “secret to success” is (their choice of wording was the question, “What is the greatest commandment?”), true to enigmatic form, He gave a simultaneously specific and vague answer. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your mind, heart, soul and strength.” I can imagine the people’s cognitive responses as He paused: “What? You care about my mind?” “Strength? What in the world does that look like?” or (my favorite), “All? You want all? All? Like…‘all’ of all? Now I’ve thought the word so many times I know even less of what it means….”

He continues: “And the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” “Neighbor,” here, based on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ could be exchanged for “fellow human being.”

When the Pharisees exploited their own disciples (and the Herodians) as pawns in a test against Jesus’ logic and obedience to the law, inquiring Him about allegiance under the pretense of paying taxes, He delivered this quip: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s [according to that which bears his image], and render to God what is God’s [according to that which bears His image].” The implication was obvious: mankind is the image-bearer of the Holy One. Render to Him that which is His: the image-bearer.

Mind made in His image.

Heart made in His image.

Soul made in His image.

Strength made in His image.

I’ve heard the Gospel presented with the kind of language that communicates something like, “God did everything so that you do nothing; God paid everything so that you pay nothing.” This kind of logic defies the greatest commandment. On the Day all mankind stands before the One on the throne set in heaven, all will give an account for what they have done; payment will be rendered either in the death due for sin, or the mind, heart, soul and strength given over in love for the One who paid the debt no one could pay on their own behalf in order to purchase life.

The cost to follow the One who gave all is to give all. The cost to follow the One who forfeit His own gain to serve others is to do the same. The cost to follow the One who devoted His life to love is to devote our lives to love. Our minds to love. Our hearts to love. Our souls to love. Our strength to love. Discipleship, becoming like Christ, is the process of learning to love. Scripture calls this process something akin to self-crucifixion. Denying ourselves. Becoming dead to the flesh and alive to God. It is by this we come fully alive, stepping into what we were made for.

“‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.’ THIS IS A GREAT MYSTERY, BUT I SPEAK CONCERNING CHRIST AND THE CHURCH.”

– Paul, writing to the Ephesian church

It was by the mouth of a murderer the Gentiles heard the words of life now available through a Man and Lord named Jesus; it was by his hand he discipled the early churches throughout the nations surrounding the middle east by his letters and periodic visits, those which we now call “epistles” and “missionary paths.” It was in the redemption and theological realignment of a religious zealot that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob grafted in the peoples exiled from the national covenant He held with Israel. It was through this vessel, this man named Paul, many timeless—though hidden—age-old mysteries were revealed.

He wrote of a Man who died (nothing particularly unusual) and rose by the power of the Spirit who conceived Him according to the will of the Father from whose heart He emerged (unusual); he wrote words of the Word who is more than mere words, the Word who was with God before the ages began and the Word who was, is, and will always be: God. YHWH, the covenant & creator God of Israel. He spoke of the “High and Lofty One,” (Isaiah 57:15) and declared how He humbled Himself to the depths of the depraved human condition, taking the form of His likeness, cloaking His glory in the frame of dust and walking amongst us (Genesis 1:27; John 1:1-18; Philippians 2:5-8).

Now we (Gentiles) have spent the last two millennia trying to assimilate various theological themes in our Hellenistic-crafted minds, attempting to explain why the sovereign God, as revealed and known by the Jewish Scriptures we call the “Old Testament”—framed as they are through a Hebraic worldview—would “leave His Father’s house.” Why, as a songwriter once put it, would He “forfeit glory to come after, till I only dwell with Thee”?

While all the holy themes we love and write about are good and noble: grace, mercy, redemption, atonement, sacrifice, priesthood, glory, et cetera, I believe none answer this question.

A man, in fact the first, we remember as “Adam” once awoke from a deep slumber with a scar across his ribs in a garden within the gates of Eden, within the gates of the physical dwelling place of God and man on earth. His eyes surely saw familiar sunlight, animals he’d named, foliage he attended to; but on this day, he saw something new: a likeness, a counterpart. “Woman,” the man called her. “Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.”

We’ve heard the story to follow. Treason. Expulsion. Exile. Death. It is interesting to me, then, that as Paul discusses the disobedience of this man, he calls him a “type of [the sinless One] to come” (Romans 5:14). In what way could the first man to treat the holy Word with contempt (Ezekiel 28 tells us injustice was “found” in him) be “a type of” this Man to come, this Jesus who lived and died in perfect obedience to the Father whom Adam betrayed? The Just One who will exact justice across the earth (Psalm 72)? What lineation lies between the two of them?

The Ephesians might’ve come near the end of Paul’s letter to them, read his exhortations about marital relationships, and figured he was simply offering the pastoral advice so many of them needed to navigate their domestic spats. He quotes the creation narrative, Adam’s poem when he first met his wife. How far their jaws must have dropped when he finished his counsel with this: “This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” We look back on the history of humanity and watch Adam follow his fallen bride into death and depravity, unable and insufficient in his means to pull her from her condition. He forfeit his life for her death, and it spread to all their children to come. How far their jaws must have plunged when he said this: “For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.”

“Let this mind be in you also,” said Paul to the Philippians, “as it was in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.”

“Listen, o daughter; consider and incline your ear; forget your own people also, and your father’s house,” the sons of Korah sang; we know it as Psalm 45. Does the language sound familiar? “Leave your father’s house.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife.” Yet Korah’s sons go further…and they finally tell us why.

“So the King will greatly desire your beauty.”

Desire.

It is on this we could build a “doctrine of desire,” if you will. Adam was a type of Him who was to come; but his insufficient effort meant only death for all to come. However, “Him who was to come,” sufficient in all things “forfeit glory” to follow His bride into death, exchange His life for hers and leave death alone in the grave.

For jealousy, it is a husband’s fury.

This is Part Two in a series evaluating complacency & discipleship entitled The Disgust of Unworthiness, The Manner Complacent & The Cost of Discipleship.

Now the multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going to make war with another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple. Salt is good, but if the salt loses its favor, how shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

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Complacency & Fascination Juxtaposed

It is a disintegration of sorts, complacency; it is the word we use to address “uncritical satisfaction in one’s achievements” as per the Oxford American Dictionary. Thus it is the fundamental breakdown of appropriate discipleship in pursuit of the beautiful One found once upon a cross and forever upon an established throne, rooted in all things just and true and bound by the very thing meant to forever invoke memory and reliance upon mercy in the hearts of mankind (see Revelation 4).

We have, in the proverbial “other hand,” the likes of fascination: to again quote the Oxford American Dictionary, it is to “draw irresistibly the attention and interest of (someone). To be fascinated with Jesus is to be drawn into His beauty, devoting all your attention and interest into pursuing His beauty, and putting no resistance against His beckoning (see To Resist | To Rest | To Reign).

Fascination with what? With the One who is our sufficiency (Psalm 87:7); there is no room for an “uncritical satisfaction in one’s achievements” (complacency) when you are awestruck by the One who is your only good (Psalm 73:28). The question then moves from why or whether we should be fascinated and becomes rather why wouldn’t we be fascinated? What does it mean that He has a voice like the ocean (Revelation 1:15, or anything else in Revelation 1 for that matter)? My voice doesn’t sound like the ocean. Or the authority He maintains and we behold in Isaiah 6:1—what were the seraphim declaring that makes the temple shake? My voice doesn’t sound like the ocean, and my words don’t make anything move (visibly, tangibly…..prayer matters). Or the humility exhibited in Philippians 2:5-11. No religion boasts of one so humble; Jesus (the perfect representation of the Father) is supreme humility, honor, justice, mercy, judgment……everything good, perfect and noble. Think about Him, Paul said (Phil 4:8). Why? Because He is fascinating.

Thus I close with this thought: if the Jesus you are thinking about is not fascinating, I’d like to suggest you’re not thinking of the Jesus revealed in Scripture.

NEXT: THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

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There is something dignified about Christmas, I think, that while the world generally skips over the Incarnation and jumps right to shiny new toys, and the Church expends her energy trying to point out the “reason for the season” to the world moving faster than a shaken snow globe, there is an invitation to every believer; in the flurry of holiday chaos, I believe the Lord leans into our ears and whispers, “hey, come here. Come look at Me. Remember Me.” And if we get our gaze right, our eyes land squarely on His humility, on His meekness, and we sign up to surrender again. The noble thing about a praying community is the old song “O Come Let Us Adore Him” really could be sung any day of the year.

I read a Christmas card the other day that read inside something to the extent of “wishing you all the magic and wonder that is Christmas.” But Christmas is not magic and wonder. Christmas is a celebration of truth, grace, hope, faith…and love. To be so fortunate, to be so privileged, to be so redeemed, that the King of the Mighty Angel Armies [plural] was born so gentle, so humbly to come to know and save and hold the heart of His beloved.

You.

So it’s this time of the year that I begin to wonder what it would have been like, the Saviour of mankind born to us after years and years and years of waiting and prophecy and waiting and hope and….waiting. To arrive at the barn, to lean over the manger, to see hope in human form. To look into the eyes of God on earth, to hear His mother singing Him a lullaby. To see light glisten in His eyes and hear Him coo and all those cute things babies do even when they aren’t the Only-Begotten-Son-of-God-Almighty-come-to-save-the-world-from-the-enemy. Nevermind the coming years in which He will grow and teach and minister and heal and save. That moment, that night in the barn, when grace was given a name….Jesus, “God saves.” God saves. He rescues. Love now existed on earth in its purest form, against the forces of Hell that rose to destroy it. The stars shining brighter than they ever had and ever will for a very long time, angels singing as they always have and always will but this time in a vocal symphony audible to human ears. The miles traveled by the anonymous shepherds with the thankless job, cast to the sidelines by the religious right, to see Him and bow and weep and laugh and embrace. The anticipation they must have endured, eager breaths containing their excitement as they crossed the fields and searched the town and followed the star and met their God. How privileged. Who were they, but shepherds and men? Who were they but broken-hearted sinners waiting for rescue and redemption? It must have been beautiful.

I’m not going to do a year-end financial campaign.

Rather, I want to share a challenge I’ve felt the Lord extend to me personally:

The less financial security you feel, the more extravagantly you sacrifice.

Matthew 6 & 7 make it clear that He sees and He provides, so a lot of exhortations to give come with a “so that you get blessed” incentive. That’s biblical. Still, my idea is this: since Italy is threatening to take all of Europe down in its impending drunken stupor and no one but China can seem to keep America afloat, I’m looking for a practical way to keep my reliance rooted firmly in the only stable Ruler I know.

5% TO DECORATE THE CAKE

I challenge you to commit to give an additional 5% of your income during 2012 to something new (& not me).

Below are some ideas I have, and if you’d like to hear more, email me. If you’re looking for another missionary to “adopt,” email me. I know plenty who are struggling to pay their bills as they obey the Lord’s mandate on their lives. If you want to give to IHOP-KC or THOP, head to ihop.org or thop.co.nz.

EXODUS CRY

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JOIN A TEAM SPONSORING A FAMILY SERVING IN THE MIDDLE EAST. LET YOUR MONEY BE SOWN INTO THE FINAL FRONTIER OF GLOBAL MISSIONS, AMONG ISRAELIS AND ISLAMICS. BECOME THEIR FRIEND. PRAY FOR THEM.

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Now the multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going to make war with another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple. Salt is good, but if the salt loses its favor, how shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

The Offense of Disregard

The humility of the sovereign LORD as revealed by the Incarnation—celebrated annually on a global level—confronts the arrogance of pride on its deepest levels; mercy is the weapon, love the means and justice the cause. For the High and Lofty One (Isaiah 57), who must humble Himself simply to look at the stars which He created, become the form of dusty creatures—the very rebels who’d committed high treason against Him upon immediate agreement with accusation against His goodness—He sets an unprecedented standard of humility and sacrificial servitude birthed in affection and provoked by an unwavering allegiance to justice.

This is our standard. For those who call Him “Lord,” having surrendered our lives to His supreme leadership, there is no other way (John 13). This is the narrow path few will find (Matthew 7), and this is the mechanism by which He will reveal to the entire created order the mystery of His wisdom and will (Ephesians 3)—a body of servants who follow the suit of their Master, a family of sons who walk according to the household of their Father, and a comparable helper crafted to partner with Him in all things (Genesis 1; Romans 5, 8; Galatians 4; Ephesians 4; Revelation 21-22).

Thus it is the highest offense against the One on the only throne set within the heights of heaven (Revelation 4) when those whose tongues rightly confess Him as “Lord of lords” (Revelation 19) carry their lives in a contradictory conduct. We must re-evaluate ourselves when we willingly sing along to choruses which proclaim His worth and majesty, yet choose mindless sitcoms over cultivating lives of prayer and depth in the Word. We must re-evaluate ourselves when we prefer broadcasted football games to engaging in fellowship. We must re-evaluate ourselves when we justify expenditures in unnecessary extravagances that prevent an ability to give in the same measure to the purposes of the Kingdom. We must re-evaluate ourselves when we are reliant upon exposure to teaching to gain an understanding of the Scriptures. We must re-evaluate ourselves when we maintain no attraction to prayer. We must ask ourselves this: “Do I know Him?” For He will confront us with that very question on a very significant Day to come (Matthew 25).

It is not impossible to watch television or tailgate a sports game, documenting it all on an iPhone via Instagram, and love Jesus. But we must evaluate ourselves. We must echo the cry of the Psalmist, inviting the eyes of the Lord to search and know us to reveal our weaknesses now while we have the opportunity to partner with His strength to grow (Psalm 139). We must wonder why the Western church, the furnace which once saw such great revival and awakenings, once having forged and sent so many missionaries, is the regional church on the globe largely deficit of revival and prayer. It should not be unusual to see a young adult wholly given to the Word, yet youth ministries are losing casualties to college campuses at record paces. It should not be unusual for families and households to have budgeted giving to ministries and missions as a priority, yet it is one of the least common activities.

For His kindness, He knows the dust of our frame (especially having become it) and will guide us into full maturity (Psalm 103; Ephesians 4; Philippians 2). But we must be mindful of the crude disrespect latent within complacency; His own words describe vomit-inducing disgust in believers who treat the gospel (Jesus) as anything less than the precious, costly treasure it is (Matthew 13; Revelation 3). A life that does not echo the example displayed by Mary of Bethany is one below the intentions and integrity of its Maker, and it is such a life which breeds boredom and complacency and thereby inconsistency and compromise. Sin rules where shame and dissatisfaction abound. An insufficient understanding of the Man who bears the Name above all names is the greatest enemy of the believer, and must be resisted.

NEXT: Complacency & Fascination Juxtaposed

Several hundred years ago—indeed, nearly two millennia—a pastor wrote a letter to a church with whom he was not personally familiar in order to address misconceptions about the Personhood of the Man Christ Jesus. Even then, within a lifetime of the ministry of the Word made flesh, His identity was under critical scrutiny. Confusion taught with authority became considered to hold the place of doctrine. Early in his letter, the pastor wrote a prayer he often prayed for this community in earnest diligence saturated with gratitude for their reputable fellowship. His first point of supplication was for knowledge to fill their minds and hearts; wise, revelatory understanding of the plans and purposes of their God—this Man whom they misunderstood. He asked this “that [they] may walk worthy.”

The word “worthy” is used often in Scripture, frequently in regards to the majesty of the LORD,[1] though it also addresses the esteemed character of a person.[2] However, this pastor qualified the worth of the posture of the church according to this standard: “that you may walk worthy of the Lord.”[3] Worthy of the One who dwells in unapproachable light, from whose face heaven & earth will flee, whom no one has ever seen, who sits on the only throne set in the highest height of heaven, who humbles Himself to behold the stars He created with a word each night, calling them each out by name. Because He knows them all. Because He knows everything.[4] That LORD. The LORD. No pressure, though. Walk worthy of Him, says this pastor. It would be easy, albeit burdensome, to read it this way: Live in a way that brings no disgrace to the fact that He has chosen to associate Himself with you.

But no pressure.

I wonder if the contemporaries of Paul looked at him in the way believers in the West read The Heavenly Man; “Little bit out of my league,” some might say. Or, “Well, I’m not him; our stories are different.” Valid. I also wonder if they just heard about how he’d been shipwrecked and had the blood and snot beat out of him a few times and wore his prison chains with pride[5] and concluded he was either out of his mind or playing a game they were unqualified for; if his life set such a high bar that by the time he wrote and said “walk worthy of that One,” they went, “Bro, you are in a league all your own.”

The fortunate thing about Paul is that he was a chronic run-on sentence writer. To the bane of all English schoolteachers working on grammar with their students, the guy who wrote the bulk of the New Testament seemed to be best friends with commas. So he drops his weighty no-pressure exhortation, and continues; “fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” Why is this a fortunate thing, when it nearly seems as if it only intensifies the content?

John said in one of his own letters to rely on the omniscience of God when we hear self-accusation rising from our own hearts; “[He] is greater than our hearts and knows all things…if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.”[6] This is the key to “fully pleasing” God; “without faith it is impossible to please [Him], for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”[7] As Tozer puts it, we must understand we dwell “under friendly skies.”[8] John’s the same one who recorded Jesus’ four-chapter discourse on orphans, sons, friends and fruit[9] (finishing it off, of course, with the “high priestly prayer” of John 17). In it, this Man the believers of Colossi were confused about said Himself; “I AM the vine, you the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”[10]

The “easy yoke and light burden” of spiritual violence (see Matthew 11) is founded in understanding two things:

1. God likes you (“fully pleasing Him”)
2. You’ve got to let Him love you (“abiding in the vine”)

One foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking out the do-o-or.

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¹ II Samuel 22:4; Psalm 18:3; Revelation 4:11; 5:9;

² Esther 1:19; I Kings 1:52; Matthew 8:8; 10:10

³ Colossians 1:10

⁴ I Timothy 6:16; Revelation 20:11; I John 4:12; Psalm 113:6; Psalm 8:3; Genesis 1:14; I John 3:20

⁵ II Corinthians 11

⁶ I John 3:20-21

⁷ Hebrews 11:6

⁸ A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy; see chapter: “The Goodness of God”

⁹ John 14-17

¹⁰ John 15:5

With the passing of time, the authority of society is passed from one generation to the next. The modern movement of twenty-somethings is gaining ground in the latest buzzword, “social justice.” We are a generation who believe in the global equality of man, more or less. We want the kids in third-world countries to have better shoes, so we buy a pair of Tom’s because sacrificing $50 is much less enticing than spending it on ourselves and knowing somewhere someone else reaped benefits from it as well. We want the Ugandan refugees to be able to return to a safe home. We want Africa rid of AIDS. This year, democracy has emerged in nations historically exclusive to monarchies and dictatorships. The youth of the nation, those young enough to believe in dreams and naive enough to try to pull it off, have overthrown the political oppression that has ruled their land for their entire lives or longer. On the American home front, the discussion is heated surrounding homosexual lifestyles & civil rights, comparing discrimination against the community to the apartheid of America’s racial history. The controversy surrounding abortion is swelling. We can’t make up our minds regarding global warming, but we want our dependence on foreign oil to wane until extinguished.

I used to have a t-shirt that read “Fight Moral Relativism” on the front. Never did a day pass that wearing it didn’t begin a conversation with a stranger about what it meant. It seems that even those who come of age in an era of muddy ideology had no idea what it was, let alone why it should be combated. They’d rather wear a shirt heralding Ghandi’s famous quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” not recognizing the inherent logical flaws. A world full of minds with different understandings of wrong things will never come to a full agreement on what it looks like to live in a world full of right things. No one creature, no single fallen image-bearer born into rebellion against the Just One, is capable of administering justice. This is because the roots of injustice are as deep as iniquity, and thus can never be conquered by simple political legislation or economical reform.

Global justice, social and otherwise, is contingent on the restoration of all things; the day the image-bearers stand redeemed before the Holy One they rebelled against and walk in the honor and nobility of their calling. The day the Just One establishes His government on the earth and makes everything new again. We can give food to the hungry in the meantime, but the fundamental levels of injustice will remain on the earth until the inherently wicked, dying heart of man experiences the fullness of the resurrection when Zion shines with the glory of her King.

We know now what it looks like for a fifth-grader to grow up under the cloud of countries engaged in war against an invisible enemy, in a nation painfully familiar with intimate attack. We saw yesterday that though ten years may pass, the grief remains tender. We know where those buildings used to be. There is a field in Pennsylvania that will doubtfully ever be built upon. There is a wall within our military headquarters much newer than the rest of the structure’s frame. Families have become accustomed to empty seats at the dinner table. I’ve sat at certain ones, even now as many lives are invested in foreign lands, as parents see their children grow through picture posts and Skype dates while we defend certain degrees of freedom we’ve cultivated and strive to maintain. I know today forgiving a ruthless enemy is impossible on my own volition, and portions of my heart are still inclined to whisper curses over the nineteen men who gave their lives to take thousands of others, over their contemporaries and counterparts. We can recognize injustice when we see it so overtly displayed; it’s not hard to find when this kind of evil triumphs for an hour. No one is wrong to desire to see justice reign, to see every wrong corrected.

Nostalgia and sentiment carried many through the weekend, remembering the lost and honoring the bravery of firemen, police officers, and rebel captives aboard a hijacked plane. America was attacked and victimized; there is no doubt about it. Yet those whispers of my heart yesterday, those decrees of condemnation over those suicidal murderers, revealed yet again the desperate wickedness of the human heart, leveling my accusations against these deceived extremists at the revelation that even after ten years, I’m still angry with them. I still have the same seed within me that was within them, that great root of all murder. Many speeches and press releases a decade ago and still yesterday made significant declarations of the nobility of man; our determination for progress and protection of freedom (even though our own government compromises the integrity of the principles lives are lost defending near daily). We still draw a line between “us” and “them,” as if we’ll ever be able to satisfy the cost. As if we’re actually any better. As if any of us have ever successfully eradicated that great root of old, ever defeated bitter envy within ourselves on our own volition, as if wars and discords have never arisen from our own selfish ambitions.

Ever more yesterday, with all the grief and heartache revisited, I felt that same call the saints have cried for years; that same cry of the oppressed for a just Judge to rule and reign, the same tension within members warring between the lusts & pride of life against the starving hunger for righteousness to be made manifest in a human frame. I want the day to come when that great root of old is forever pulled out of the soil of the human heart, when sorrow is extinguished and love can be fully experienced.

And so, with gritted teeth, I forgive those men. I grieve their delusions. No man who gives his life for Allah will spend eternity in Paradise, and I dread their fate. I release their debt against my nation, my land, my people, my family, and I call on that Judge to come. I survey the landscape of the “home of the brave” and wonder what it would look like if this were our corporate cry. If within all the pain, the fear many woke up to yesterday, dreading an anniversary attack, we would seek the safe One for safety. The One whose name alone is a refuge, a protective fortress. The One who conquered that root of old.

(maranatha.)

Naturally, everybody tells this preacher guy he’s an idiot. “God wouldn’t let that happen,” said some. “I don’t believe in God,” said others. “Whatever,” said the preacher. He began to list condemnations.

He called the politicians out on their poor leadership. Told the President he was being a prideful idiot, and reprimanded the senators because they kept thinking they were the bomb-diggity, running the most stable nation in the region, yea the world, and built their cushy houses and enjoyed themselves.

He told everyone who said calamity wasn’t coming that it was actually coming because of their actions, their ignorant irresponsibility. All the folks who live like there’s no God of justice who’s going to make every wrong thing right. Those guys.

He condemned the Top 40 singers and latest Grammy winners for singing songs about nothing.

Wait….what?

Half of the problem with this story is it doesn’t fly with everybody. For one thing, we’ve got to get past the idea that we don’t have absolutely perfect judgment and if our decisions differ with the Ruler of the universe’s decisions, we’re in the wrong. Before that though we have to swallow whether or not we believe in a Ruler of the universe. But say both of those things are true, and there is a God who is good and He is going to establish righteousness and justice and before He does, He sends guys like this preacher (Scripture calls them “prophets”) to tell everybody what’s coming so that anybody in the line of fire has the opportunity to get out of the way and make it to safety. High ground, if you will. So corrupt politicians are in trouble. We can all see that coming. Criminals are going to get punished. Right. Makes sense. But musicians? Singers? Of anybody we can throw stones at, it’s the folks dominating the radio? What?

The young preacher gets more specific. “Yeah,” he says. “Those guys. Those guys who sing about nothing. They have the audacity to use instruments for themselves instead of for the Lord, they glorify themselves, and they sing about nothing. They’re surrounded by injustice, and they don’t care. They aren’t doing anything they’re supposed to. They are in for it if they don’t repent.”

The young preacher might say these singers and musicians are committing an “abuse of melody.” Say music is a holy thing, say it’s been an integral feature of the presence of this Ruler of the universe since eternity past and is right now and will be clear into eternity future.

In the years around 760 B.C., a guy named Amos said all of these things to Israel. But I’m wondering how easily he could send the same letter to America these days and call Hollywood and MTV out for their vanity.

All this to say, concluding my “Of Dust & Development” discourse on the creative pursuits of mankind, let us not be in vain. Let us not sing songs about nothing at all. Let us musicians, singers and songwriters do our job.

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Woe to you who put far off the day of doom, who cause the seat of violence to come near; who lie on beds of ivory, stretch out on your couches, eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall; who sing idly to the sound of stringed instruments, and invent for yourselves musical instruments like David; who drink wine from bowls, and anoint yourselves with the best ointments, but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. Therefore they shall now go captive as the first of the captives and those who recline at banquets shall be removed. (Amos 6:3-7)